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BY 



SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1908 



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COPYRIGHT, I90S, BY SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published November iqo8 






€o <&. %. f. 

A CHEERFUL FIRE-WORSHIPER 



Contentjs 



I. The Bayonet-Poker ...... 1 

II. On Being a Doctrinaire . . . .43 

III. Christmas and the Literature of 

Disillusion 97 

IV. The Ignominy of Being Grown-Up 131 

V. Christmas and the Spirit of Demo- 
cracy 191 



" Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy " appeared 
originally in Everybody's Magazine, the four other essays 
in the Atlantic Monthly. Acknowledgments are due to 
the editors of these periodicals for permission to reprint 
them here. 



I 




€1^0 25aponet:^^ofeer 

As I sit by my Christmas fire I now 
and then give it a poke with a bayo- 
net. It is an old-fashioned British 
bayonet which has seen worse days. 
I picked it up in a little shop in Bir- 
mingham for two shillings. I was at- 
tracted to it as I am to all reformed 
characters. The hardened old sinner, 
having had enough of war, was a 
candidate for a peaceful position. I 
3 



was glad to have a hand in his refor- 
mation. 

To transform a sword into a prun- 
ing hook is a matter for a skilled 
smith, but to change a bayonet into 
a poker is within the capacity of the 
least mechanical. All that is needed 
is to cause the bayonet to forsake the 
murderous rifle barrel and cleave to 
a short wooden handle. Henceforth 
its function is not to thrust itself into 
the vitals of men, but to encourage 
combustion on winter nights. 

The bayonet - poker fits into the 
philosophy of Christmas, at least into 
the way I find it easy to philosophize. 
It seems a better symbol of what is 
happening than the harps of gold and 
the other beautiful things of which 
the hymn-writers sing, but which or- 
4 



€5e 25aponct^^ofter 

dinary people have never seen. The 
golden harps were made for no other 
purpose than to produce celestial har- 
mony. They suggest a scene in which 
peace and good-will come magically 
and reign undisturbed. Everything 
is exquisitely fitted for high uses. It 
is not so with the bayonet that was, 
and the poker that is. For it peace 
and good-will are afterthoughts. They 
are not even remotely suggested in 
its original constitution. And yet, for 
all that, it serves excellently as an 
instrument of domestic felicity. 

The difficulty with the Christmas 
message is not in getting itself pro- 
claimed, but in getting itself believed; 
that is, in any practicable fashion. 
Every one recognizes the eminent de- 
5 



sirability of establishing more ami- 
cable relations between the members 
of the human family. But is this 
amiable desire likely to be fulfilled 
in this inherently bellicose world ? 

The argument against Christmas 
has taken a menacingly scientific 
form. A deluge of cold water in the 
form of unwelcome facts has been 
thrown upon our enthusiasm for hu- 
manity. 

''Peace on earth," it is said, "is 
against Nature. It flies in the face of 
the processes of evolution. You have 
only to look about you to see that 
everything has been made for a quite 
different purpose. For ages Mother 
Nature has been keeping house in her 
own free-and-easy fashion, gradually 
improving her family by killing off 



the weaker members, and giving them 
as food to the strong. It is a plan that 
has worked well — for the strong. 
When we interrogate Nature as to 
the 'reason why' of her most marvel- 
ous contrivances, her answer has a 
grim simplicity. We are like Red 
Riding-Hood when she drew back 
the bed-curtains and saw the wolfish 
countenance. — ' What is your great 
mouth made for, grandmother ? ' — 
'To eat you with, my dear.' 

"To eat, while avoiding the un- 
pleasant alternative of being eaten, 
is a motive that goes far and explains 
much. The haps and mishaps of the 
hungry make up natural history. The 
eye of the eagle is developed that it 
may see its prey from afar, its wings 
are strong that it may pounce upon 
7 



it, its beak and talons are sharpened 
that it may tear it in pieces. By right 
of these superiorities, the eagle reigns 
as king among birds. 

"The wings of the eagle, the sin- 
ews of the tiger, the brain of the man, 
are primarily weapons. Each crea- 
ture seizes the one that it finds at 
hand, and uses it for offense and de- 
fense. The weapon is improved by 
use. The brain of the man has proved 
a better weapon than beak or talons, 
and so it has come to pass that man 
is lord of creation. He is able to de- 
vour at will creatures who once were 
his rivals. 

*'By using his brain, he has sought 
out many inventions. The sum total 
of these inventions we call by the im- 
posing name Civilization. It is a mar- 
8 



velously tempered weapon, in the 
hands of the strong races. Alas, for 
the backward peoples who fall be- 
neath it. One device after another 
has been added for the extermination 
of the slow-witted. 

"Even religion itself assumes to 
the anthropologist a sinister aspect. 
The strong nations have always been 
religious. Their religion has helped 
them in their struggle for the mastery. 
There are many unpleasant episodes 
in history. Spiritual wealth, like ma- 
terial wealth, is often predatory. 

"In the Book of Judges there is a 
curious glimpse into a certain kind of 
religiousness. A man of Mt. Ephraim 
named Micah had engaged a young 
Levite from Bethlehem-Judah as his 
spiritual adviser. He promised him 



a modest salary, ten shekels of sil- 
ver annually, and a suit of clothes, 
and his board. 'And the Levite was 
content to dwell with the man ; and 
the young man was unto him as one 
of his sons. And Micah consecrated 
the Levite, and the young man be- 
came his priest, and was in the house 
of Micah. Then said Micah, Now 
know I that the Lord will do me good, 
seeing I have a Levite to my priest.' 
"This pleasant relation continued 
till a f reebooting party of Danites ap- 
peared. They had discovered a bit of 
country where the inhabitants * dwelt 
in security, after the manner of the Zi- 
donians, quiet and secure; for there 
was none in the land, possessing au- 
thority, that might put them to shame 
in any thing, and they were far from 
10 



the Zidonians.' It was just the oppor- 
tunity for expansion which the chil- 
dren of Dan had been waiting for, so 
they marched merrily against the un- 
protected valley. On the way they 
seized Micah's priest. * And they said 
unto him. Hold thy peace, lay thine 
hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, 
and be to us a father and a priest: 
is it better for thee to be priest unto 
the house of one man, or to be priest 
unto a tribe and a family in Israel ? 
And the priest's heart was glad, and 
he took the ephod, and the teraphim, 
and the graven image, and went in 
the midst of the people.' 

" Of course, Micah did n't like it, 

and called out, *Ye have taken away 

my gods which I made, and the 

priest, and are gone away, and what 

11 



€l|e 95aponet#ofter 

have I more ? ' The Danites answered 
after the manner of the strong, * Let 
not thy voice be heard among us, 
lest angry fellows fall upon you, and 
thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy 
household. And the children of Dan 
went their way: and when Micah 
saw that they were too strong for him, 
he turned and went back unto his 
house.' 

"Is not that the way of the world .? 
The strong get what they want and 
the weak have to make the best of it. 
Micah, when he turned back from a 
hopeless conflict, was a philosopher, 
and the young Levite when he went 
forward was a pietist. Both the phi- 
losophy and the piety were by-pro- 
ducts of the activity of the children 
of Dan. They sadly needed the priest 
12 



€f)e 25aponet^^ofter 

to sanctify the deeds of the morrow 
when 'they took that which Micah 
had made, and the priest which he 
had, and came unto Laish, unto a 
people quiet and secure, and smote 
them with the edge of the sword ; and 
they burnt the city with fire. And 
there was no dehverer, because it was 
far from Zidon, and they had no 
dealings with any man ; and it was in 
the valley that lieth by Beth-rehob.' 
"The wild doings in the little val- 
ley that lieth by Beth-rehob have been 
repeated endlessly. Whittier describes 
the traditional alliance between Re- 
ligion and sanguinary Power : — 

Feet red from war fields trod the church aisles 

holy. 
With trembling reverence, and the oppressor 

there 

13 



€l)e 26aponet#ofter 

Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly. 
Crushed human hearts beneath the knee of 
prayer. *" 

*'When we inquire too curiously 
about the origin of the things which 
we hold most precious, we come to 
suspect that we are little better than 
the receivers of stolen goods. How 
could it be otherwise with the de- 
scendants of a long line of freeboot- 
ers ? How are we to uphold the family- 
fortunes if we forsake the means by 
which they were obtained ? Are we 
not fated by our very constitutions 
to continue a predatory life?" 

There are lovers of peace and of 
justice to whom such considerations 
appeal with tragic force. They feel 
that moral ideals have arisen only to 
mock us, and to put us into hopeless 
14 



antagonism to the world in which we 
live. In the rude play of force, many 
things have been developed that are 
useful in our struggle for existence. 
But one faculty has developed that is 
destined to be our undoing, — it is 
Conscience. Natural history does not 
give any satisfactory account of it. It 
runs counter to our other tendencies. 
It makes us miserable just when we 
are getting the advantage of others. 
Now, getting the advantage of others 
we had understood was the whole of 
the exciting game of life. To plot for 
this has marvelously sharpened hu- 
man wit. But Conscience, just at the 
critical moment, cries '*For shame!" 
It is an awkward situation. Not only 
the rules of the game, but the game 
itself, is called in question. 
15 



As a consequence, many conscien- 
tious persons lose all the zest of living. 
The existing world seems to them 
brutal, its order, tyranny; its moral- 
ity, organized selfishness ; its accepted 
religion, a shallow conventionality. 
In such a world as this, the good man 
stands like a gladiator who has sud- 
denly become a Christian. He is over- 
whelmed with horror at the bloody 
sports, yet he is forced into the arena 
and must fight. That is his business, 
and he cannot rise above it. 

I cannot, myself, take such a 
gloomy view of the interesting little 
planet on which I happen to find my- 
self. I take great comfort in the 
thought that the world is still unfin- 
ished, and that what we see lying 
around us is not the completed pro- 
16 



duct, but only the raw material. And 
this consolation rises into positive 
cheer when I learn that there is a 
chance for us to take a hand in the 
creative work. It matters very little 
at this stage of the proceedings 
whether things are good or bad. The 
question for us is, What is the best 
use to which we can put them ? We 
are not to be bullied by facts. If we 
don't like them as they are, we may 
remould them nearer to our heart's 
desire. At least we may try. 

Here is my bayonet. A scientific 
gentleman, seeing it lying on my 
hearth, might construct a very pretty 
theory about its owner. A bayonet 
is made to stab with. It evidently 
implies a stabber. To this I could 
only answer, "My dear sir, do not 
17 



look at the bayonet, look at me. Do 
I strike you as a person who would 
be likely to run you through, just be- 
cause I happen to have the conven- 
iences to do it with ? Sit down by the 
jBre and we will talk it over, and you 
will see that you have nothing to fear. 
What the Birmingham manufacturer 
designed this bit of steel for was his 
affair, not mine. When it comes to 
design, two can play at that game. 
What I use this for, you shall pre- 
sently see." 

Now, here we have the gist of the 
matter. Most of the gloomy prognos- 
tications which distress us arise from 
the habit of attributing to the thing a 
power for good or evil which belongs 
only to the person. It is one of the 
earliest forms of superstition. The 
18 



€fte 25aponet;:^0fter 

anthropologist calls it "fetichism" 
when he finds it among primitive peo- 
ples. When the same notion is pro- 
pounded by advanced thinkers, we 
call it "advanced thought." We at- 
tribute to the Thing a malignant pur- 
pose and an irresistible potency, and 
we crouch before it as if it were our 
master. When the Thing is set going, 
we observe its direction with awe- 
struck resignation, just as people once 
drew omens from the flight of birds. 
What are we that we should interfere 
with the Tendencies of Things ? 

The author of ''The Wisdom of 
Solomon" gives a vivid picture of the 
terror of the Egyptians when they 
were "shut up in their houses, the 
prisoners of darkness, and fettered 
with the bonds of a long night, they 
19 



lay there exiled from eternal provi- 
dence." Everything seemed to them 
to have a malign purpose. "Whether 
it were a whistling wind, or a melodi- 
ous noise of birds among the spread- 
ing branches, or a pleasing fall of 
water running violently, or a terrible 
sound of stones cast down, or a run- 
ning that could not be seen of skip- 
ping beasts, or a roaring voice of most 
savage wild beasts, or a rebounding 
echo from the hollow mountains ; 
these things made them swoon for 
fear." For, says the author, "fear is 
nothing else than a betraying of the 
succours that reason offers." 

We have pretty generally risen 
above the primitive forms of this su- 
perstition. We do not fear that a rock 
or tree will go out of its way to harm 
SO 



us. We are not troubled by the sus- 
picion that some busybody of a planet 
is only waiting its chance to do us an 
ill turn. We are inclined to take the 
dark of the moon with equanimity. 

But when it comes to moral ques- 
tions we are still dominated by the 
idea of the fatalistic power of inani- 
mate things. We cannot think it pos- 
sible to be just or good, not to speak 
of being cheerful, without looking at 
some physical fact and saying hum- 
bly "By your leave." We personify 
our tools and machines, and the oc- 
cult symbols of trade, and then as 
abject idolaters we bow down before 
the work of our own hands. We are 
awe-struck at their power, and mag- 
nify the mystery of their existence. 
We only pray that they may not turn 
21 



us out of house and home, because 
of some blunder in our ritual observ- 
ance. That they will make it very 
uncomfortable for us, we take for 
granted. We have resigned ourselves 
to that long ago. They are so very 
complicated that they will make no 
allowance for us, and will not permit 
us to live simply as we would like. 
We are really very plain people, and 
easily flurried and worried by super- 
fluities. We could get along very 
nicely and, we are sure, quite health- 
fully, if it were not for our Things. 
They set the pace for us, and we have 
to keep up. 

We long for peace on earth, but of 

course we can't have it. Look at our 

warships and our forts and our great 

guns. They are getting bigger every 

22 



year. No sooner do we begin to have 
an amiable feeling toward our neigh- 
bors than some one invents a more in- 
genious way by which we may slaugh- 
ter them. The march of invention is 
irresistible, and we are being swept 
along toward a great catastrophe. 

We should like very much to do 
business according to the Golden 
Rule. It strikes us as being the only 
decent method of procedure. We 
have no ill feeling toward our com- 
petitors. We should be pleased to see 
them prosper. We have a strong pre- 
ference for fair play. But of course 
we can't have it, because the corpo- 
rations, those impersonal products of 
modern civilization, won't allow it. 
We must not meddle with them, for 
if we do we might break some of the 



laws of political economy, and in that 
case nobody knows what might hap- 
pen. 

We have a great desire for good 
government. We should be gratified 
if we could believe that the men who 
pave our streets, and build our school- 
houses, and administer our public 
funds, are well qualified for their sev- 
eral positions. But we cannot, in a 
democracy, expect to have expert serv- 
ice. The tendency of politics is to 
develop a Machine. The Machine is 
not constructed to serve us. Its pur- 
pose is simply to keep itself going. 
When it once begins to move, it is 
only prudent in us to keep out of the 
way. It would be tragical to have it 
run over us. 

So, in certain moods, we sit and 
24 



grumble over our formidable fetiches. 
Like all idolaters, we sometimes turn 
iconoclasts. In a short-lived fit of 
anger we smash the Machine. Hav- 
ing accomplished this feat, we feel a 
little foolish, for we don't know what 
to do next. 

Fortunately for the world there are 
those who are neither idolaters nor 
iconoclasts. They do not worship 
Things, nor fear them, nor despise 
them, — they simply use them. 

In the Book of Baruch there is in- 
serted a letter purporting to be from 
Jeremiah to the Hebrew captives in 
Babylon. The prophet discourses 
on the absurdity of the worship of 
inanimate things, and incidentally 
draws on his experience in gardening. 
25 



An idol, he says, is "like to a white 
thorn in an orchard, that every bird 
sitteth upon." It is as powerless, he 
says, to take the initiative " as a scare- 
crow in a garden of cucumbers that 
keepeth nothing." In his opinion, 
one wide-awake man in the cucumber 
patch is worth all the scarecrows that 
were ever constructed. ''Better there- 
fore is the just man that hath none 
idols." 

What brave air we breathe when 
we join the company of the just men 
who have freed themselves from idol- 
atry! Listen to Governor Bradford 
as he enumerates the threatening facts 
which the Pilgrims to New England 
faced. He mentions all the difficulties 
which they foresaw, and then adds, 
*'It was answered that all great and 
26 



honorable actions were accompanied 
with great difficulties, and must be en- 
terprised with answerable courages." 

What fine spiritual audacity! Not 
courage, if you please, but courages. 
There is much virtue in the plural. It 
was as much as to say, *'A11 our eggs 
are not in one basket. We are likely 
to meet more than one kind of danger. 
What of it ? We have more than one 
kind of courage. It is well to be pre- 
pared for emergencies." 

It was the same spirit which made 
William Penn speak of his colony on 
the banks of the Delaware as the 
"Holy Experiment." In his testi- 
mony to George Fox, he says, "He 
was an original and no man's copy. 
He had not learned what he said by 
study. Nor were they notional nor 
27 



speculative, but sensible and practi- 
cal, the setting up of the Kingdom of 
God in men's hearts, and the way 
of it was his work. His authority was 
inward and not outward, and he got 
it and kept it by the love of God. He 
was a divine and a naturalist, and all 
of God Almighty's making." 

In the presence of men of such 
moral originality, ethical problems 
take on a new and exciting aspect. 
What is to happen next ? You cannot 
jSnd out by noting the trend of events. 
A peep into a resourceful mind would 
be more to the purpose. That mind 
perceives possibilities beyond the ken 
of a duller intelligence. 

I should like to have some compe- 
tent person give us a History of Moral 
Progress as a part of the History of 
28 



Invention. I know there is a distrust 
of Invention on the part of many good 
people who are so enamored of the 
ideal of a simple life that they are sus- 
picious of civilization. The text from 
Ecclesiastes, "God made man up- 
right ; but they have sought out many 
inventions," has been used to discour- 
age any budding Edisons of the spirit- 
ual realm. Dear old Alexander Cru- 
den inserted in his Concordance a 
delicious definition of invention as 
here used: ''Inventions: New ways 
of making one's self more wise and 
happy than God made us." 

It is astonishing how many people 
share this fear thaf, if they exert their 
minds too much, they may become 
better than the Lord intended them 
to be. A new way of being good, or 



of doing good, terrifies them. Never- 
theless moral progress follows the 
same lines as all other progress. First 
there is a conscious need. Necessity 
is the mother of invention. Then 
comes the patient search for the ways 
and means through which the want 
may be satisfied. Ages may elapse be- 
fore an ideal may be realized. Num- 
berless attempts must be made, the 
lessons of the successive failures must 
be learned. It is in the ability to draw 
the right inference from failure that 
inventive genius is seen. 

"It would be madness and incon- 
sistency," said Lord Bacon, "to sup- 
pose that things which have never 
yet been performed can be performed 
without using some hitherto untried 
means." The inventor is not dis- 
30 



couraged by past failures, but he is 
careful not to repeat them slavishly. 
He may be compelled to use the same 
elements, but he is always trying 
some new combination. If he must 
fail once more, he sees to it that it 
shall be in a slightly different way. 
He has learned in twenty ways how 
the thing cannot be done. This in- 
formation is very useful to him, and 
he does not begrudge the labor by 
which it has been obtained. All this 
is an excellent preparation for the 
twenty-first attempt, which may pos- 
sibly reveal the way it can be done. 
When thousands of good heads are 
working upon a problem in this fash- 
ion, something happens. 

For several generations the physi- 
cal sciences have offered the most in- 
31 



viting field for inventive genius. Here 
have been seen the triumphs of the 
experimental method. There are, 
however, evidences that many of the 
best intellects are turning to the fasci- 
nating field of morals. Indeed, the 
very success of physical research 
makes this inevitable. 

When in 1783 the brothers Mont- 
golfier ascended a mile above the 
earth in a balloon there was a thrill 
of excitement, as the spectators felt 
that the story of Daedalus had been 
taken from the world of romance into 
the world of fact. But, after all, the 
invention went only a little way in the 
direction of the navigation of the air. 
It is one thing to float, and another 
thing to steer a craft toward a desired 
haven. The balloon having been in- 
32 



vented, the next and more diflScult 
task was to make it dirigible. It was 
the same problem that had puzzled 
the inventors of primitive times who 
had discovered that, by making use 
of a proper log, they could be carried 
from place to place on the water. 
What the landing place should be 
was, however, a matter beyond their 
control. They had to trust to the cur- 
rent, which was occasionally favor- 
able to them. In the first exhilaration 
over their discovery they were doubt- 
less thankful enough to go down 
stream, even when their business 
called them up stream. At least they 
had the pleasant sensation of getting 
on. They were obeying the law of 
progress. The uneasy radical who 
wanted to progress in a predeter- 
33 



€l^e 25ap0nd:#oft0r 

mined direction must have seemed 
like a visionary. But the desire to go 
up stream and across stream and be- 
yond sea persisted, and the log be- 
came a boat, and paddles and oars 
and rudder and sail and screw pro- 
peller were invented in answer to the 
ever increasing demand. 

But the problem of the dirigibility 
of a boat, or of a balloon, is simplicity 
itself compared with the amazing 
complexity of the problems involved 
in producing a dirigible civilization. 
It falls under Bacon's category of 
** things which never yet have been 
performed." Heretofore civilizations 
have jBoated on the cosmic atmos- 
phere. They have been carried about 
by mysterious currents till they could 
float no longer. Then their wreck- 
34 



age has furnished materials for his- 
tory. 

But all the time human ingenuity 
has been at work attacking the great 
problem. Thousands of little inven- 
tions have been made, by which we 
gain temporary control of some of the 
processes. We are coming to have a 
consciousness of human society as a 
whole, and of the possibility of direct- 
ing its progress. It is not enough to 
satisfy the modern intellect to devise 
plans by which we may become more 
rich or more powerful. We must also 
tax our ingenuity to find ways for the 
equitable division of the wealth and 
the just use of power. We are no 
longer satisfied with increase in the 
vast unwieldy bulk of our possessions, 
we eagerly seek to direct them to defi- 
35 



nite ends. Even here in America we 
are beginning to feel that *' progress" 
is not an end in itself. Whether it is 
desirable or not, depends on the di- 
rection of it. Our glee over the cen- 
sus reports is chastened. We are not 
so certain that it is a clear gain to 
have a million people live where a 
few thousand lived before. We insist 
on asking, How do they live.^ Are 
they happier, healthier, wiser .^ As a 
city becomes bigger, does it become 
a better place in which to rear chil- 
dren ? If it does not, must not civic 
ambition seek to remedy the defect.^ 
The author of Ecclesiastes made 
the gloomy comment upon the civiliza- 
tion of his own day : " I returned, and 
saw under the sun, that the race is not 
to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, 



neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet 
riches to men of understanding, nor 
yet favour to men of skill." In so far as 
that is true to-day, things are working 
badly. It must be within our power 
to remedy such an absurd situation. 
We have to devise more eflScient means 
for securing fair play, and for enforc- 
ing the rules of the game. We want 
to develop a better breed of men. In 
order to do so, we must make this the 
first consideration. In proportion as 
the end is clearly conceived and ar- 
dently desired, will the effective means 
be discovered and employed. 

Why has the reign of peace and 
good-will upon the earth been so long 
delayed ? We grow impatient to hear 
the bells 

37 



Ring out old shapes of foul disease; 

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 

Ring out the thousand wars of old. 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand. 

The answer must be that "the val- 
iant man and free" must, like every 
one else, learn his business before he 
can expect to have any measure of 
success. The kindlier hand must be 
skilled by long practice before it can 
direct the vast social mechanism. 

The Fury in Shelley's ''Prome- 
theus Unbound" described the pre- 
dicament in which the world has long 
found itself : — 

The good want power but to weep barren tears. 
The powerful goodness want; worse need for 
them. 

38 



The wise want love, and those who love want 

wisdom; 
And all best things are thus confused to ill. 

This is discouraging to the unim- 
aginative mind, but the very confu- 
sion is a challenge to human intelli- 
gence. Here are all the materials for 
a more beautiful world. All that is 
needed is to find the proper combina- 
tion. Goodness alone will not do the 
work. Goodness grown strong and 
wise by much experience is, as the 
man on the street would say, "quite 
a different proposition." Why not 
try it.? 

We may not live to see any dra- 
matic entrance of the world upon 
"the thousand years of peace," but 
we are living in a time when men 
are rapidly learning the art of doing 
39 



peacefully many things which once 
were done with infinite strife and con- 
fusion. We live in a time when intel- 
ligence is applied to the work of love. 
The children of light are less content 
than they once were to be outranked 
in sagacity by the children of this 
world. The result is that many things 
which once were the dreams of saints 
and sages have come within the field 
of practical business and practical 
politics. They are a part of the day's 
work. A person of active tempera- 
ment may prefer to live in this stirring 
period, rather than to have his birth 
postponed to the millennium. 

It is only the incorrigible doctri- 
naire who refuses to sympathize with 
the illogical processes by which the 
world is gradually being made better. 
40 



With him it is the millennium or no- 
thing. He will tolerate no indirect ap- 
proach. He will give no credit for 
partial approximations. He insists on 
holding every one strictly to his first 
fault. There shall be no wriggling 
out of a false position, no gradual 
change in function, no adaptations 
of old tools to new uses. 

In the next essay I shall have some- 
thing to say about this way of looking 
at things. It would do no harm to 
stir up the doctrinaire assumptions 
with the bayonet-poker. 



II 

<©n 25cin0 a Wotttmaite 




<©n 25exn0 a 2Doctrinaxre 

The question is sometimes asked by 
those who devise tests of literary taste, 
" If you were cast upon a desert island 
and were allowed but one book, what 
book would you choose ?" 

If I were in such a predicament I 

should say to the pirate chief who was 

about to maroon me, "My dear sir, 

as this island seems, for the time be- 

45 



#n 25emg a aDoctrtnaire 

ing, to have been overlooked by Mr. 
Andrew Carnegie, I must ask the loan 
of a volume from your private library. 
And if it is convenient for you to al- 
low me but one volume at a time, I 
pray that it may be the Unabridged 
Dictionary." 

I should choose the Unabridged 
Dictionary, not only because it is big, 
but because it is mentally filling. One 
has the sense of rude plenty such as 
one gets from looking at the huge 
wheat elevators in Minneapolis. Here 
are the harvests of innumerable fields 
stored up in little space. There are 
not only vast multitudes of words, but 
each word means something, and each 
has a history of its own, and a family 
relation which it is interesting to trace. 

But that which I should value most 



#n 25emg a SDoctrmaire 

on my desert island would be the op- 
portunity of acquainting myself with 
the fine distinctions which are made 
between different human qualities. It 
would seem that the Aggregate Mind 
which made the language is much 
cleverer than we usually suppose. 
The most minute differences are in- 
fallibly registered in tell-tale words. 
There are not only words denoting 
the obvious differences between the 
good and the bad, the false and the 
true, the beautiful and the ugly, but 
there are words which indicate the del- 
icate shades of goodness and truth and 
beauty as they are curiously blended 
with variable quantities of badness 
and falseness and ugliness. There are 
not only words which tell what you 
are, but words which tell what you 
47 



<©n 25ring a SDocttmaire 

think you are, and what other peo- 
ple think you are, and what you think 
they are when you discover that they 
are thinking that you are something 
which you think you are not. 

In the bright lexicon of youth there 
is no such word as "fail," but the dic- 
tionary makes up for this deficiency. 
It is particularly rich in words descrip- 
tive of our failures. As the procession 
of the virtues passes by, there are 
pseudo-virtues that tag on like the 
small boys who follow the circus. 
After Goodness come Goodiness and 
Goody-goodiness ; we see Sanctity 
and Sanctimoniousness, Piety and 
Pietism, Grandeur and Grandiosity, 
Sentiment and Sentimentality. When 
we try to show off we invariably de- 
ceive ourselves, but usually we de- 
48 



#tt 25ein0 a SDoctnttaire 

ceive nobody else. Everybody knows 
that we are showing off, and if we do 
it well they give us credit for that. 

A scholar has a considerable amount 
of sound learning, and he is afraid 
that his fellow citizens may not fully 
appreciate it. So in his conversation 
he allows his erudition to leak out, with 
the intent that the stranger should 
say, "What a modest, learned man 
he is, and what a pleasure it is to 
meet him." Only the stranger does 
not express himself in that way, but 
says, "What an admirable pedant he 
is, to be sure." Pedantry is a well- 
recognized compound, two thirds 
sound learning and one third harm- 
less vanity. 

Sometimes on the street you see a 
man whom you take for an old ac- 



#n 25eitt0 a SDoctrmaire 

quaint ance. You approach with out- 
stretched hand and expectant coun- 
tenance, but his stony glare of non- 
recognition gives you pause. The 
fact that he does not know you gives 
you time to perceive that you do not 
know him and have never seen him 
before. A superficial resemblance has 
deceived you. In the dictionary you 
may find many instances of such mis- 
takes in the moral realm. 

One of the most common of these 
mistakes in identity is the confusion 
of the Idealist and the Doctrinaire. 
An idealist is defined as "one who 
pursues and dwells upon the ideal, a 
seeker after the highest beauty and 
good." A doctrinaire may do this also, 
but he is differentiated as "one who 
theorizes without sufficient regard for 
50 



<©n 25exng a aDoctrinaxre 

practical considerations, one who un- 
dertakes to explain things by a nar- 
row theory or group of theories." 

The Idealist is the kind of man we 
need. He is not satisfied with things 
as they are. He is one 

Whose soul sees the perfect 
Which his eyes seek in vain. 

If a more perfect society is to come, 
it must be through the efforts of per- 
sons capable of such visions. Our 
schools, churches, and all the institu- 
tions of a higher civilization have as 
their chief aim the production of just 
such personalities. But why are they 
not more successful ? What becomes 
of the thousands of young idealists 
who each year set forth on the quest 
for the highest beauty and truth ? 
Why do they tire so soon of the quest 
51 



<&n 25eing a aDoctrinaxre 

and sink into the ranks of the spirit- 
ually unemployed. 

The answer is that many persons 
who set out to be idealists end by be- 
coming doctrinaires. They identify 
the highest beauty and truth with 
their own theories. After that they 
make no further excursions into the 
unexplored regions of reality, for fear 
that they may discover their identifi- 
cation to have been incomplete. 

The Doctrinaire is like a mason 
who has mixed his cement before he 
is ready to use it. When he is ready 
the cement has set, and he can't use 
it. It sticks together, but it won't 
stick to anything else. George Eliot 
describes such a predicament in her 
sketch of the Reverend Amos Bar- 
ton. Mr. Barton's plans, she says, 
52 



<Bn 25^tng a aDottmaite 

were, like his sermons, "admirably 
well conceived, had the state of the 
case been otherwise." 

By eliminating the "state of the 
case," the Doctrinaire is enabled to 
live the simple life — intellectually 
and ethically. The trouble is that it is 
too simple. To his mind the question, 
"Is it true ?'' is never a disturbing one, 
nor does it lead to a troublesome in- 
vestigation of matters of fact. His 
definition of truth has the virtue of 
perfect simplicity, — "A truth is that 
which has got itself believed by me." 
His thoughts form an exclusive club, 
and when a new idea applies for 
admission it is placed on the waiting 
list. A single black-ball from an old 
member is suiBficient permanently to 
exclude it. When an idea is once in, 
53 



<©n 25em5 a SDoctrmaire 

it has a very pleasant time of it. All 
the opinions it meets with are club- 
able, and on good terms with one an- 
other. Whether any of them are re- 
lated to any reality outside their own 
little circle would be a question that 
it would be impolite to ask. It would 
be like asking a correctly attired 
member who was punctilious in pay- 
ing his club dues, whether he had 
also paid his tailor. To the Doctri- 
naire there seems something sordid 
and vulgar in the anxiety to make 
the two ends — theory and practice 
— meet. It seems to indicate that one 
is not intellectually in comfortable 
circumstances. 

The Doctrinaire, when he has con- 
ceived certain ideals, is not content 
that they should be cast upon the 
54 



<©n 25emg a EDotttmaire 

actual world, to take their chances 
in the rough-and-tumble struggle for 
existence, proving their right to the 
kingdom by actually conquering it, 
inch by inch. He cannot endure such 
tedious delays. He must have the sat- 
isfaction of seeing his ideals instantly 
realized. The ideal life must be lived 
under ideal conditions. And so, for 
his private satisfaction, he creates for 
himself such a world into which he 
retires. 

It is a world of natural law, as he 
understands natural law. There are 
no exceptions, no deviation from gen- 
eral principles, no shadings off, no 
fascinating obscurities, no rude practi- 
cal jokes, no undignified by-play, no 
"east windows of divine surprise," 
no dark unfathomable abysses. He 
55 



<&n 25ein0 a 2Doctrinatte 

would not allow such things. In his 
world the unexpected never happens. 
The endless chain of causation runs 
smoothly. Every event has a cause, 
and the cause is never tangled up 
with the effect, so that you cannot tell 
where one begins and the other ends. 
He is intellectually tidy, and every- 
thing must be in its place. If some- 
thing turns up for which he cannot find 
a place, he sends it to the junk shop. 
When the Doctrinaire descends 
from the homogeneous world which 
he has constructed, into the actual 
world which, in the attempt to get 
itself made, is becoming more amaz- 
ingly heterogeneous all the time, he is 
in high dudgeon. The existence of 
these varied contradictorinesses seems 
to him a personal affront. 
56 



<&n 25emg a aDoctrinaire 

It is as if a person had lived in a 
natural history museum, where every 
stuffed animal knew his place, and had 
his scientific name painted on the glass 
case. He is suddenly dropped into a 
tropical jungle where the animals act 
quite differently. The tigers won't 
"stay put," and are liable to turn up 
just when he does n't want to see them. 

I should not object to his unpre- 
paredness for the actual state of things 
if the Doctrinaire did not assume the 
airs of a superior person. He lays all 
the blame for the discrepancy be- 
tween himself and the universe on the 
universe. He has the right key, only 
the miserable locks won't fit it. Hav- 
ing formed a very clear conception of 
the best possible world, he looks down 
patronizingly upon the commonplace 
57 



#n 25etttff a aDoctrmatre 

people who are trying to make the best 
out of this imperfect world. Having 
large possessions in Utopia, he lives 
the care-free life of an absentee land- 
lord. His praise is always for the dead, 
or for the yet unborn ; when he looks 
on his contemporaries he takes a 
gloomy view. That any great man 
should be now alive, he considers a 
preposterous assumption. He treats 
greatness as if it were a disease to be 
determined only by post-mortem ex- 
amination. 

One of the earliest satires on the 
character of the Doctrinaire is to be 
found in the Book of Jonah. Jonah 
was a prophet by profession. He re- 
ceived a call to preach in the city of 
Nineveh, which he accepted after some 
hesitation. He denounced civic cor- 
58 



<©tt 26ein0 a 2Dortrinaire 

ruption and declared that in forty days 
the city would be destroyed. Having 
performed this professional duty, Jo- 
nah felt that there was nothing left 
for him but to await with pious resig- 
nation the fulfillment of his prophecy. 
But in this case the unexpected hap- 
pened, the city repented and was 
saved. This was gall and wormwood 
to Jonah. His orderly mind was of- 
fended by the disarrangement of his 
schedule. What was the use of being 
a prophet if things did not turn out 
as he said ? So we are told "it dis- 
pleased Jonah exceedingly, and he 
was angry." Still he clung to the hope 
that, in the end, things might turn out 
badly enough to justify his public ut- 
terances. "Then Jonah went out of 
the city, and sat on the east side of 
59 



<©tt S&eittB a aDoctrinaite 

the city, and there made him a booth, 
and sat under it in the shadow, till 
he might see what would become of 
the city." 

Poor grumpy old Jonah ! Have we 
not sat under his preaching, and read 
his editorials, and pondered his books, 
full of solemn warnings of what will 
happen to us if we do not mend our 
ways ? We have been deeply impressed, 
and in a great many respects we have 
mended our ways, and things have be- 
gun to go better. But Jonah takes no 
heed of our repentance. He is only 
thinking of those prophecies of his. 
Just in proportion as things begin to 
look up morally, he gets low in his 
mind and begins to despair of the Re- 
public. 

The trouble with Jonah is that he 
60 



<&n 25eing a aDoctrinaire 

can see but one thing at a time, and 
see that only in one way. He cannot 
be made to appreciate the fact that 
"the world is full of a number of 
things," and that some of them are 
not half bad. When he sees a dan- 
gerous tendency he thinks that it will 
necessarily go on to its logical con- 
clusion. He forgets that there is such 
a thing as the logic of events, which 
is different from the logical processes 
of a person who sits outside and prog- 
nosticates. There is one tendency 
which all tendencies have in common, 
that is, to develop counter tendencies. 
There is, for example, a tendency on 
the part of the gypsy-moth caterpillar 
to destroy utterly the forests of the 
United States. But were I addressing 
a thoughtful company of these cater- 
61 



<©n 25emg a 2Doctrittaite 

pillars I should urge them to look 
upon their own future with modest 
self-distrust. However well their pro- 
gramme looks upon paper, it cannot 
be carried out without opposition. 
Long before the last tree has been van- 
quished, the last of the gypsy moths 
may be fighting for its life against the 
enemies it has made. 

The Doctrinaire is very quick at 
generalizing. This is greatly to his 
credit. One of the powers of the hu- 
man mind on which we set great store 
is that of entertaining general ideas. 
This is where we think we have the 
advantage of the members of the brute 
creation. They have particular ex- 
periences which at the time are very 
exciting to them, but they have no ab- 
stract notions, — or, at least, no way 



<©n 25emg a a)actrmatre 

of expressing them to us. We argue 
that if they really had these ideas 
they would have invented language 
long ago, and by this time would have 
had Unabridged Dictionaries of their 
own. But we humans do not have 
to be content with this hand-to-mouth 
way of thinking and feeling. When 
we see a hundred things that strike 
us as being more or less alike, we 
squeeze them together into one men- 
tal package, and give a single name 
to the whole lot. This is a great con- 
venience and enables us to do our 
thinking on a large scale. By organ- 
izing our various impressions into a 
union, and inducing them to work 
together, we are enabled to do col- 
lective bargaining with the Universe. 
If, for example, I were asked to tell 
63 



<&n ^tins a 2Doctrinaite 

what I think of the individuals in- 
habiting the United States, I should 
have to give it up. Assuming a round 
eighty million persons, all of whom 
it would be a pleasure to meet, there 
must be, at the lowest computation, 
seventy-nine million, nine hundred 
and ninety-nine thousand, three hun- 
dred and seventy-five people of whose 
characters I do not know enough to 
make my opinion of any value. Of 
the remaining fragment of the popu- 
lation, my knowledge is not so perfect 
as I would wish. As for the whole 
eighty million, suppose I had to give 
a single thought to each person, I 
have not enough cogitations to go 
around. 

What we do is to stop the ruinous 
struggle of competing thoughts by 
64 



<©n 25eing a aDocttmahre 

recognizing a community of interests 
and forming a merger, under the col- 
lective term "American." Then all 
difficulties are minimized. Almost 
all our theorizing about human affairs 
is carried on by means of these sym- 
bols. Millions of different personali- 
ties are merged in one mental pic- 
ture. We talk of a class even more 
readily than we talk of an individual. 
This is all very well so long as we 
do not take these generalizations too 
seriously. The mistake of the Doc- 
trinaire lies not in classifying people, 
but in treating an individual as if he 
could belong to only one class at a 
time. The fact is that each one of us 
belongs to a thousand classes. There 
are a great many ways of classifying 
human beings, and as in the case of 
65 



<&n 25em0 a 2Doctnnaire 

the construction of tribal lays, " every 
single one of them is right," as far as 
it goes. You may classify people ac- 
cording to race, color, previous con- 
dition of servitude, height, weight, 
shape of their skulls, amount of their 
incomes, or their ability to write 
Latin verse. You may inquire whether 
they belong to the class that goes to 
church on Sunday, whether they are 
vaccinationists or anti - vaccination- 
ists, whether they like problem plays, 
whether they are able to read a short 
passage from the Constitution of the 
United States, whether they have dys- 
pepsia or nervous prostration or only 
think they have; or, if you will, you 
may make one sweeping division be- 
tween the sheep and the goats, and 
divide mankind according to location, 



<©n 25etn0 a 2Dotttmatre 

as did the good Boston lady who was 
accustomed to speak of those who 
lived out of sight of the Massachu- 
setts State House as *'New Yorkers 
and that kind of people." 

Such divisions do no harm so long 
as you make enough of them. Those 
who are classed with the goats on one 
test question will turn up among the 
sheep when you change the subject. 
Your neighbor is a wild radical in 
theology, and you look upon him as a 
dangerous character. Try him on the 
tariff, and you find him conservative 
to a fault. 

I have listened, of a Monday morn- 
ing, to an essay in a ministers' meet- 
ing on the problem of the "Un- 
churched." The picture presented 
to the imagination was a painful one. 
67 



#n 25eitt0 a SDoctnuatee 

In the discussion that followed, the 
class of the Unchurched was not 
clearly differentiated from the other 
unfortunate class of the Unwashed. 
In the evening I attended a lecture 
by a learned professor who, as I hap- 
pened to know, was not as regular in 
church attendance as he should be. 
As I listened to him I said to myself, 
"Who would have suspected that he 
is one of the Unchurched .?" 

Fortunately, all the disabilities per- 
taining to the Unwashed and Un- 
churched and Uncultivated and Un- 
vaccinated and Unskilled and Un- 
baptized and Unemployed do not 
necessarily rest upon the same per- 
son. Usually there are palliating 
circumstances and compensating ad- 
vantages that are to be taken into 



<©tt 25emg a aDoctrinaire 

account. In a free country there is a 
career for all sorts of talent, and if one 
fails in one direction he may reach 
great dignity in another. I may be a 
mere nobody, so far as having had 
ancestors in the Colonial Wars is con- 
cerned, and yet I may be high up in 
the Knights of Pythias. A good lady 
who goes to the art class is able to 
talk of Botticelli. But she has no right 
to look down upon her husband as an 
inferior creature because he supposes 
that Botticelli is one of Mr. Heinz's 
fifty-seven kinds of pickles. He may 
know some things which she does not, 
and they may be fully as important. 
The great abuse of the generalizing 
faculty comes in the arraying class 
against class. Among the University 
Statutes of Oxford in the Middle Ages 



#n 25ettt5 a aDotttmaire 

was one directed against this evil. 
Dire academic punishments were 
threatened to students who made 
"odious comparisons of country to 
country, nobihty to ignobility, Faculty 
to Faculty." I sympathize deeply 
with rules against such "unhonest 
garrulities." It is a pity that they 
cannot be enforced. 

The mischief comes in reducing all 
dififerences to the categories of the 
Inferior and Superior. The fallacy of 
such division appears when we ask, 
Superior in what ? Inferior in what ? 
Anybody can be a superior person if 
he can only choose his ground and 
stick to it. That is the trick that royal 
personages have understood. It is 
etiquette for kings to lead the con- 
versation always. One must be a very 
70 



<©tt 95etng a 2Docttinaire 

stupid person not to shine under such 
circumstances. 

Suppose you have to give an audi- 
ence to a distinguished archaeologist 
who has spent his Hfe in Babylonian 
excavations. Fifteen minutes before 
his arrival you take up his book and 
glance through it till you find an easy 
page that you can understand. You 
master page 142. Here you are se- 
cure. You pour into the astonished 
ear of your guest your views upon the 
subject. Such ripe erudition in one 
whose chief interests lie elsewhere 
seems to him almost superhuman. 
Your views on page 142 are so sound 
that he longs to continue the conver- 
sation into what had before seemed 
the more important matter contained 
in page 143. But etiquette forbids. 
71 



<9n 25eitt0 a Dottmaite 

It is your royal prerogative to confine 
yourself to the safe precincts of page 
142, and you leave it to his imagina- 
tion to conceive the wisdom which 
might have been given to the world 
had it been your pleasure to expound 
the whole subject of archaeology. 

I had myself, in a very humble way, 
an experience of this kind. In a do- 
mestic crisis it was necessary to pla- 
cate a newly arrived and apparently 
homesick cook. I am unskilled in 
diplomacy, but it was a case where the 
comfort of an innocent family de- 
pended on diplomatic action . I learned 
that the young woman came from 
Prince Edward Island. Up to that 
moment I confess that Prince Edward 
Island had been a mere geographical 
expression. All my ideas about it 
72 



<©tt 25rin0 a aDoctrmairt 

were wrong, I having mixed it up 
with Cape Breton, which as I now 
know is quite dilfferent. But instantly 
Prince Edward Island became a mat- 
ter of intense interest. Our daily 
bread was dependent on it. I entered 
my study and with atlas and encyclo- 
paedia sought to atone for the negli- 
gence of years. I learned how Prince 
Edward Island lay in relation to Nova 
Scotia, what were its principal towns, 
its climate, its railroad and steam- 
boat connections, and acquired enough 
miscellaneous information to adorn 
a five-minutes personally conducted 
conversation. Thus freshly furnished 
forth, I adventured into the kitchen. 
Did she take the boat from George- 
town to Pictou ? She did. Is n't it 
too bad that the strait is sometimes 
73 



<©n 25emg a SDottrinatte 

frozen over in winter ? It is. Some 
people cross to New Brunswick on ice 
boats from Cape Traverse ; that must 
be exciting and rather cold. She 
thought so too. Did she come from 
Charlottetown ? No. Out Tignish 
way ? Yes ; halfway from Charlotte- 
town to Tignish. Queen's County ? 
Good apple country ? Yes, she never 
saw such good apples as they raise in 
Queen's County. When I volunteered 
the opinion that the weather on Prince 
Edward Island is fine but changeable, 
I was received on the footing of an 
old inhabitant. 

I did not find it necessary to go to 
the limits of my knowledge. I had 
still several reserve facts, classified in 
the Encyclopaedia under the heads. 
Geology, Administration, and Fi- 
74 



#n 25etn0 a 2Dottrittaire 

nance. I had established my position 
as a superior person with an intuitive 
knowledge of Prince Edward Island. 
If the Encyclopaedia itself had walked 
into the kitchen arm in arm with the 
Classical Dictionary, she could not 
have been more impressed. At least, 
that is the way I like to think she felt. 
It is the v>ay I feel under similar cir- 
cumstances. 

One watches the Superior Person 
leading a conversation with the ad- 
miration due to Browning's Herve 
Riel, when. 

As its inch of way were the wide sea's profound, 

he steered the ship in the narrow chan- 
nel. It is well, however, for one who 
undertakes such feats to make sure 
that he really has an inch of way ; it 
is none too much. 
75 



<©n 25em0 a aDortrmaite 

In these days it is so easy for one 
to get a supply of ready-made know- 
ledge that it is hard to keep from ap- 
plying it indiscriminately. We make 
incursions into our neighbor's af- 
fairs and straighten them out with a 
ruthless righteousness which is very 
disconcerting to him, especially when 
he has never had the pleasure of our 
acquaintance till we came to set him 
right. There is a certain modesty of 
conscience which would perhaps be 
more becoming. It comes only with 
the realization of practical difficulties » 
I like the remark of Sir Fulke Gre- 
ville in his account of his friend, Sir 
Philip Sydney. Speaking of his liter- 
ary labors he says : " Since my declin- 
ing age it is true I had for some years 
more leisure to discover their imper- 
76 



<©n 25emg a 2Doctrinaxre 

fections than care and industry to 
mend them, finding in myself what 
all men complain of: that it is more 
easy to find fault, excuse, or tolerate, 
than to examine or reform." 

The idea that we know what a per- 
son ought to do, and especially what 
he ought not to do, before we know 
the person or how he is situated, is one 
dear to the mind of the Doctrinaire. 
If his mind did not naturally work 
that way he would not be a Doctri- 
naire. He is always inclined to put 
duty before the pleasure of finding 
out what it is all about. In this way 
he becomes overstocked with a lot of 
unrelated duties, for which there is 
no home consumption, and which he 
endeavors to dump on the foreign 
market. This makes him unpopular. 
77 



#n 25eitt5 a 2Doctrmaite 

I am not one of those who insist that 
everybody should mind his own busi- 
ness ; that is too harsh a doctrine. 
One of the rights and privileges of a 
good neighbor is to give neighborly 
advice. But there is a corresponding 
right on the part of the advisee, and 
that is to take no more of the advice 
than he thinks is good for him. There 
is one thing that a man knows about 
his own business better than any out- 
sider, and that is how hard it is for 
him to do it. The adviser is always 
telling him how to do it in the finest 
possible way, while he, poor fellow, 
knows that the paramount issue is 
whether he can do it at all. It re- 
quires some grace on the part of a 
person who is doing the best he can 
under extremely difficult circum- 
78 



<©tt 25ein0 a 2Dod:tinaire 

stances to accept cheerfully the re- 
marks of the intelligent critic. 

Persons who write about the wild 
animals they have known are likely 
to be contradicted by persons who 
have been acquainted with other wild 
animals, or with the same wild ani- 
mals under other circumstances. How 
much more difficult is it to give an 
exhaustive and correct account of that 
wonderfully complex creature, man. 

One whose business requires him 
to meet large numbers of persons who 
are all in the same predicament, is 
in danger of generalizing from a too 
narrow experience. The teacher, the 
charity- worker, the preacher, the phy- 
sician, the man of business, each has 
his method of professional classifica- 
tion. Each is tempted to forget that 
79 



<©n 25emg a SDoctrinaire 

he is not in a position from which he 
can survey human nature in its en- 
tirety. He only sees one phase end- 
lessly repeated. The dentist, for ex- 
ample, has special advantages for 
character study, but he should re- 
member that the least heroic of his 
patients has moments when he is 
more blithe and debonair than he has 
ever seen him. 

It takes an unusually philosophical 
mind to make the necessary allow- 
ances for its own limitations. If you 
were to earn your daily bread at the 
Brooklyn Bridge, and your sole duty 
was to exhort your fellow men to " step 
lively, "you would doubtless soon come 
to divide mankind into three classes, 
namely: those who step lively, those 
who do not step lively, and those who 
80 



#n 25em0 a 2Doctrinatte 

step too lively. If Aristotle himself 
were to cross the bridge, you would see 
nothing in the Peripatetic Philosopher 
but a reprehensible lack of agility. 

At the railway terminus there is 
an office which bears the inscription, 
''Lost Articles." In the midst of the 
busy traffic it stands as a perpetual 
denial of the utilitarian theory that all 
men are governed by enlightened self- 
interest. A very considerable propor- 
tion of the traveling public can be 
trusted regularly to forget its portable 
property. 

The gentleman who presides over 
the lost articles has had long experi- 
ence as an alienist. He is skeptical 
as to the reality of what is called mind. 
So far as his clients are concerned, it 
is notable for its absence. To be con- 
81 



<©tt 2Bem0 a aDoctrmaire 

fronted day after day by the absent- 
minded, and to listen to their monot- 
onous tale of woe, is disenchanting. 
It is diflficult to observe all the ameni- 
ties of life when one is dealing with 
the defective and delinquent classes. 
When first I inquired at the Lost 
Article window, I was received as a 
man and brother. There was even 
an attempt to show the respect due to 
one who may have seen better days. 
I had the feeling that both myself and 
my lost article were receiving individ- 
ual attention. I left without any sense 
of humiliation. But the third time I 
appeared I was conscious of a change 
in the atmosphere. A single glance at 
the Restorer of Lost Articles showed 
me that I was no longer in his eyes 
a citizen who was in temporary mis- 
82 



#tt 25emg a aDoctmaire 

fortune. I was classified. He recog- 
nized me as a rounder. ''There he is 
again," he said to himself. ''Last 
time it was at Rockingham Junction, 
this time it is probably on the Saugus 
Branch; but it is the same old story, 
and the same old umbrella." 

What hurt my feelings was that 
nothing I could say would do any good. 
It would not help matters to explain 
that losing articles was not my steady 
occupation, and that I had other in- 
terests in life. He would only wearily 
note the fact as another indication of 
my condition. "That's the way they 
all talk. These defectives can never 
be made 'to see their conduct in its 
true light. They always explain their 
misfortunes by pretending that their 
thoughts were on higher things." 
83 



#tt 25ein0 a SDocttmaire 

The Doctrinaire when he gets hold 
of a good thing never lets up on it. 
His favorite idea is produced on all 
occasions. It may be excellent in its 
way, but he sings its praises till we 
turn against it as we used to do in 
the Fourth Reader Class, when we 
all with one accord turned against 
"Teacher's Pet." Teacher's Pet might 
be dowered with all the virtues, but we 
of the commonalty would have none 
of them. We chose to scoff at an ex- 
cellence that insulted us. 

The King in "Hamlet" remarked, 

" There lives within the very flame of love 
A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it; 
And nothing is at a like goodness still; 
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy, 
Dies in his own too-much." 

The Doctrinaire can never realize 
the fatal nature of the "too-much." 
84 



If a little does good, he is sure that 
more will do better. He will not allow 
of any abatements or alleviations ; we 
must, if we are to keep on good terms 
with him, be doing the whole duty of 
man all the time. He will take our 
own most cherished principles and 
turn them against us in such an offen- 
sive manner that we forget that they 
are ours. He argues on the right side 
with such uncompromising energy 
that we have to take the wrong side to 
maintain our self-respect. 

If there is one thing I believe in, it 
is fresh air. I like to keep my window 
open at night, or better still to sleep 
under the stars. And I was glad to 
learn from the doctors that this is 
good for us. But the other day I 
started on a railway journey with pre- 
ss 



#n 2&em5 a aDoctrmato 

monitory signs of catching cold. An 
icy blast blew upon me. I closed the 
car window. A lady instantly opened 
it. I looked to see what manner of 
person she was. Was she one who 
could be touched by an illogical ap- 
peal ? or was she wholly devoted to a 
cause ? 

It needed but a glance to assure me 
that she was a Doctrinaire, and cap- 
able only of seeing the large public 
side of the question. What would it 
avail for me to say, "Madam, I am 
catching cold, may I close the win- 
dow.'^" 

"Apostate man!" she would reply, 
"did I not hear you on the plat- 
form of the Anti-Tuberculosis Asso- 
ciation plead for free and unlimited 
ventilation without waiting for the 
86 



<©n 25ein0 a Wt^tttinmt 

consent of other nations? Did you 
not appear as one who stood four- 
square 'gainst every wind that blows, 
and asked for more ? And now, just 
because you are personally inconven- 
ienced, you prove recreant to the 
Cause. Do you know how many 
cubic feet of fresh air are necessary 
to this car?" 

I could only answer feebly, "When 
it comes to cubic feet I am perfectly 
sound. I wish there were more of 
them. What troubles me is only a 
trifling matter of two linear inches on 
the back of my neck. Your general 
principle. Madam, is admirable. I 
merely plead for a slight relaxation 
of the rule. I ask only for a mere pit- 
tance of warmed-over air." 

Perhaps the most discouraging thing 
87 



<©tt 25eittg a SDocttniaite 

about the Doctrinaire is that while 
he insists upon a high ideal, he is 
intolerant of the somewhat tedious 
ways and means by which the ideal is 
to be reached. With his eye fixed on 
the Perfect, he makes no allowance 
for the imperfectness of those who 
are struggling toward it. There is a 
pleasant passage in Hooker's "Eccle- 
siastical Polity" in which I find great 
comfort: "That which the Gospel of 
Christ requireth is the perpetuity of 
virtuous duties, not the perpetuity of 
exercise or action, but disposition per- 
petual, and practise as often as times 
and opportunities require. Just, val- 
iant, liberal, temperate, and holy men, 
are they which can whensoever they 
will, and will whensoever they ought, 
execute whatever their several per- 
88 



<©n 25eing a 2Dortrinatre 

fections impart. If virtues did always 
cease when they cease to work, there 
would be nothing more pernicious to 
virtue than sleep." 

The judicious Hooker was never 
more judicious than in making this ob- 
servation. It is a great relief to be as- 
sured that in this world, where there 
are such incessant calls upon the 
moral nature, it is possible to be a just, 
valiant, liberal, temperate, and holy 
man, and yet get a good night's sleep. 

But your Doctrinaire will not have 
it so. His hero retains his position 
only during good behavior, which 
means behaving all the time in an 
obviously heroic manner. It is not 
enough that he should be to "true oc- 
casion true," he must make occasions 
to show himself off. 



Now it happens that in the actual 
world it is not possible for the best 
of men to satisfy all the demands of 
their fidgety followers. In the picture 
of the battle between St. George and 
the dragon, the attitude of St. George 
is all that could be desired. There is 
an easy grace in the way in which he 
deals with the dragon that is greatly 
to his credit. There is a mingling of 
knightly pride and Christian resigna- 
tion over his own inevitable victory, 
that is charming. 

St. George was fortunate in the mo- 
ment when he had his picture taken. 
He had the dragon just where he 
wanted him. But it is to be feared 
that if some one had followed him 
with a kodak, some of the snap-shots 
might have been less satisfactory. 
90 



<©tt 25ein5 a 2D0tttinatre 

Let us suppose a moment when the 
dragon 

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. 

It is a way that dragons have when 
they are excited. And what if that 
moment St. George dodged. Would 
you criticise him harshly for such 
an action ? Would it not be better to 
take into consideration the fact that 
under such circumstances his first 
duty might not be to be statuesque ? 
When in the stern conflict we have 
found a champion, I think we owe 
him some little encouragement. When 
he is doing the best he can in a very 
difficult situation, we ought not to 
blame him because he does not act 
as he would if there were no diffi- 
culties at all. "Life," said Marcus 
Aurelius, "is more like wrestling than 
91 



<©tt 25ein0 a aDoctthtaite 

dancing." When we get that point 
of view we may see that some atti- 
tudes that are not graceful may be 
quite effective. It is a fine thing to 
say, — 

" Dare to be a Daniel, 
Dare to stand alone, 
Dare to have a purpose true 
And dare to make it known." 

But if I had been a Daniel and as 
the result of my independent action 
had been cast into the den of lions, I 
should feel as if I had done enough in 
the way of heroism for one day, and 
I should let other people take their 
turn. If I found the lions inclined to 
be amiable, I should encourage them 
in it. I should say, "I beg your par- 
don. I do not mean to intrude If 
it 's the time for your afternoon nap, 
don't pay any attention to me. After 
92 



<©tt 2&em0 a 2Dotttmanre 

the excitement that I 've had where I 
came from, I should hke nothing bet- 
ter than to sit down by myself in the 
shade and have a nice quiet day of 
it." 

And if the lions were agreeable, I 
should be glad. I should hate to have 
at this moment a bland Doctrinaire 
look down and say, "That was a 
great thing you did up there, Daniel. 
People are wondering whether you 
can keep it up. Your friends are get- 
ting a mite impatient. They expected 
to hear by this time that there was 
something doing down there. Stir 
'em up, Daniel 1 Stir 'em up!" 

Perhaps at this point some fair- 
minded reader may say, "Is there 
not something to be said in favor of 
93 



<&n 25emg a 2DDcttmaire 

the Doctrinaire ? Is he not, after all, 
a very useful character? How could 
any great reform be pushed through 
without his assistance ? " 

Yes, dear reader, a great deal may 
be said in his favor. He is often very 
useftil. So is a snow-plough, in mid- 
winter, though I prefer a more flex- 
ible implement when it comes to cul- 
tivating my early peas. 

There is something worse than to 
be a Doctrinaire who pursues an 
ideal without regard to practical con- 
sideration; it is worse to be a Philis- 
tine so immersed in practical con- 
siderations that he does n't know an 
ideal when he sees it. If the choice 
were between these two I should say, 
'*Keep on being a Doctrinaire. You 
have chosen the better part." But 



<©n 25eing a a)ottnnah:e 

fortunately there is a still more excel- 
lent way. It is possible to be a prac- 
tical idealist pursuing the ideal with 
full- regard for practical considera- 
tions. There is something better than 
the conscience that moves with un- 
deviating rectitude through a moral 
vacuum. It is the conscience that is 
related to realities. It is a moral 
force operating continuously on the 
infinitely diversified materials of hu- 
man life. It feels its way onward. 
It takes advantage of every incident, 
with a noble opportunism. It is the 
conscience that belongs to the patient, 
keen - witted, open - minded, cheery 
*'men of good will," who are doing 
the hard work of the world. 



ni 

Cftri^tma^ anti tfie %itttatntt of 




€l)ri^tma^ anti tf^e %itttatmt of 
a)i0Hu^ion 



"What makes the book so cross?" 
asked the youngest listener, who had 
for a few minutes, for lack of any- 
thing better to do, been paying some 
slight attention to the reading that was 
intended for her elders. 

It was a question which we had 
not been bright enough to ask. We 
had been plodding on with the vague 
idea that it was a delightful book. 



Certainly the subject was agreeable. 
The writer was taking us on a ram- 
ble through the less frequented parts 
of Italy. He had a fine descriptive 
power, and made us see the quiet 
hill towns, the old walls, the simple 
peasants, the white Umbrian cattle 
in the fields. It was just the sort of 
thing that should have brought peace 
to the soul; but it did n't. 

The author had the trick of rubbing 
his subject the wrong way. Every- 
thing he saw seemed to suggest some- 
thing just the opposite. When every 
prospect pleased, he took offense at 
something that was n't there. He 
was himself a favored man of leisure, 
and could go where he pleased and 
stay as long as he liked. Instead of 
being content with a short Pharisaic 
100 



Eiterature of aDi^iHu^ion 

prayer of thanksgiving that he was 
not as other men, he turned to berate 
the other men, who in New York 
were, at that very moment, rushing 
up and down the crowded streets in 
the frantic haste to be rich. He treated 
their fault as his misfortune. Indeed, 
it was unfortunate that the thought of 
their haste should spoil the serenity 
of his contemplation. His fine sense 
for the precious in art led him to seek 
the untrodden ways. He indulged in 
bitter gibes at the poor taste of the 
crowd. In some far-away church, just 
as he was getting ready to enjoy a 
beautifully faded picture on the wall, 
he caught sight of a tourist. He was 
only a mild-mannered man with an 
apologetic air, as one who would say, 
" Let me look, too. I mean no harm." 
101 



It was a meek effort at apprecia- 
tion, but to the gentleman who wrote 
the book it was an offense. Here was 
a spy from "the crowd," an emis- 
sary of "the modern." By and by 
the whole pack would be in full cry 
and the lovely solitude would be no 
more. Then the author wandered 
off through the olives, where under 
the unclouded Italian sky he could 
see the long line of the Apennines, 
and there he meditated on the insuf- 
ferable smoke of Sheffield and Pitts- 
burg. 

The young critic was right, the 
author was undoubtedly "cross." In 
early childhood this sort of thing 
is well understood, and called by its 
right name. When a small person 
starts the day in a contradictory mood 
102 



%imatntt of 2Dx^aiu^itm 

and insists on taking everything by 
the wrong handle, — he is not allowed 
to flatter himself that he is a superior 
person with a "temperament," or a 
fine thinker with a gift for righteous 
indignation. He is simply set down 
as cross. It is presumed that he got 
up the wrong way, and he is advised 
to try again and see if he cannot do 
better. If he is fortunate enough to 
be thrown into the society of his 
contemporaries, he is subjected to 
a course of salutary discipline. No 
mercy is shown to "cross-patch." He 
cannot present his personal griev- 
ances to the judgment of his peers, 
for his peers refuse to listen. After a 
while he becomes conscious that his 
wrath defeats itself, as he hears the 
derisive couplet : — 
103 



" Johnny s mad. 
And I am glad.'* 

What's the use of being unpleasant 
any longer if it only produces such 
unnatural gayety in others. At last, 
as a matter of self-defense, he puts 
on the armor of good humor, which 
alone is able to protect him from the 
assaults of his adversaries. 

But when a person has grown up 
and is able to express himself in liter- 
ary language, he is freed from these 
wholesome restraints. He may in- 
dulge in peevishness to his heart's 
content, and it will be received as a 
sort of esoteric wisdom. For we are 
simple-minded creatures, and prone 
to superstition. It is only a few thou- 
sand years since the alphabet was in- 
vented, and the printing-press is still 
104 



literature of SDi^tHu^ion 

more recent. There is still a certain 
Delphic mystery about the printed 
page which imposes upon the imagi- 
nation. When we sit down with a 
book, it is hard to realize that we are 
only conversing with a fellow being 
who may know little more about the 
subject in hand than we do, and who 
is attempting to convey to us not only 
his life-philosophy, but also his aches 
and pains, his likes and dislikes, and 
the limitations of his own experience. 
When doleful sounds come from the 
oracle, we take it for granted that 
something is the matter with the uni- 
verse, when all that has happened is 
that one estimable gentleman, on a 
particular morning, was out of sorts 
when he took pen in hand. 

At Christmas time, when we natur- 
105 



ally want to be on good terms with 
our fellow men, and when our pur- 
suit of happiness takes the unexpect- 
edly genial form of plotting for their 
happiness, the disposition of our fa- 
vorite writers becomes a matter of 
great importance to us. A surly, sour- 
tempered person, taking advantage of 
our confidence, can turn us against 
our best friends. If he has an acrid 
wit he may make us ashamed of our 
highest enthusiasms. He may so pic- 
ture human life as to make the mes- 
sage "Peace on earth, good will to 
men" seem a mere mockery. 

I have a friend who has in him 
the making of a popular scientist, 
having an easy flow of extempora- 
neous theory, so that he is never 
closely confined to his facts. One 
106 



literature of SDi^illu^ion 

of his theories is that pessimism is 
purely a literary disease, and that it 
can only be conveyed through the 
printed page. In having a single 
means of infection it follows the 
analogy of malaria, which in many 
respects it resembles. No mosquito, 
no malaria ; so no book, no pessimism. 
Of course you must have a partic- 
ular kind of mosquito, and he must 
have got the infection somewhere; 
but that is his concern, not yours. 
The important thing for you is that 
he is the middleman on whom you 
depend for the disease. In like man- 
ner, so my friend asserts, the writer 
is the middleman through whom 
the public gets its supply of pessi- 
mism. 

I am not prepared to give an un- 
107 



qualified assent to this theory, for I 
have known some people who were 
quite ilUterate who held very gloomy 
views. At the same time it seems to 
me there is something in it. 

When an unbookish individual is 
in the dumps, he is conscious of his 
own misery, but he does not attrib- 
ute it to all the world. The evil is 
narrowly localized. He sees the dark 
side of things because he is so unluck- 
ily placed that that alone is visible, 
but he is quite ready to believe that 
there is a bright side somewhere. 

I remember several pleasant half- 
hours spent in front of a cabin on 
the top of a far western mountain. 
The proprietor of the cabin, who was 
known as "Pat," had dwelt there in 
solitary happiness until an intruder 
108 



ttitemture of aDi^e^iltoton 

came and settled near by. There was 
incompatibility of temper, and a feud 
began. Henceforth Pat had a griev- 
ance, and when a sympathetic trav- 
eler passed by, he would pour out the 
story of his woes ; for like the wretched 
man of old he meditated evil on his 
bed against his enemy. And yet, as 
I have said, the half-hours spent in 
listening to these tirades were not 
cheerless, and no bad effects followed. 
Pat never impressed me as being 
inclined to misanthropy; in fact, I 
think he might have been set down 
as one who loved his fellow men, al- 
ways excepting the unlucky individ- 
ual who lived next to him. He never 
imputed the sins of this particular 
person to Humanity. There was al- 
ways a sunny margin of good humor 
109 



around the black object of his hate. 
In this respect Pat was angry and 
sinned not. After listening to his vitu- 
perative eloquence I would ride on 
in a hopeful frame of mind. I had 
seen the worst and was prepared for 
something better. It was too bad that 
Pat and his neighbor did not get on 
better together. But this was an in- 
cident which did not shut out the 
fact that it was a fine day, and that 
some uncommonly nice people might 
live on the other side of the range. 

But if Pat had possessed a high de- 
gree of literary talent, and had writ- 
ten a book, I am sure the impression 
would have been quite different. Two 
loveless souls, living on top of a lonely 
mountain, with the pitiless stars shin- 
ing down on their futile hate ! What 
110 



literature of 2Di^tllu^ion 

theme could be more dreary. After 
reading the first chapter I should be 
miserable. 

"This," I should murmur, "is Life. 
There are two symbolic figures, — Pat 
and the Other. The artist, with re- 
lentless sincerity, refuses to allow our 
attention to be distracted by the in- 
troduction of any characters uncon- 
nected with the sordid tragedy. Here 
is human nature stripped of all its 
pleasant illusions. What a poor crea- 
ture is man!" 

Pat and his neighbor, having be- 
come characters in a book, are taken 
as symbols of humanity, just as the 
scholastic theologians argued in many 
learned volumes, that Adam and 
Eve, being all that there were at the 
time, should be treated as "all man- 
ill 



kind," at least for purposes of repro- 
bation. 

The author who is saddest when 
he writes takes us at a disadvantage. 
He may assert that he is only telling 
us the truth. If it is ugly, that is not 
his fault. He pictures to us the thing 
he sees, and declares that if we could 
free ourselves from our sentimental 
preference for what is pleasing we 
should praise him for his fidelity. 

In all this the author is well within 
his rights. But if he prefers unmitigated 
gloom in his representations of life, 
we on our part have the right of not 
taking him too seriously. Speaking of 
disillusion, two can play at that game. 
We must get over our too romantic 
attitude toward literature. We must 
not exaggerate the significance of 
112 



%ittxatntt of M^iiln^im 

what is presented to us, and treat that 
which is of necessity partial as if it 
were universal. When we are pre- 
sented with a poor and shabby world, 
peopled only with sordid self-seekers, 
we need not be unduly depressed. We 
take the thing for what it is, a frag- 
ment. We are not looking directly at 
the world, but only at so much of it 
as has been mirrored in one particular 
mind. The mirror is not very large, 
and there is an obvious flaw in it 
which more or less distorts the image. 
Still let us be thankful for what is set 
before us, and make allowance for the 
natural human limitations. In this 
way one can read almost any sincere 
book, not only with profit, but with a 
certain degree of pleasure. 

Let us remember that only a very 
113 



small amount of good literature falls 
within Shelley's definition of poetry 
as "the record of the best and happi- 
est moments of the happiest and best 
minds." For these rare outpourings of 
joyous, healthy life we are duly thank- 
ful. They are to be received as gifts 
of the gods, but we must not expect 
too many of them. Even the best 
minds often leave no record of their 
happiest moments, while they be- 
come garrulous over what displeases 
them. The cave of AduUam has al- 
ways been the most prolific literary 
centre. Every man who has a griev- 
ance is fiercely impelled to self-ex- 
pression. He is not content till his 
grievance is published to the unheed- 
ing world. And it is well that it is so. 
We should be in a bad way if it were 
114 



%itttatntt of 2Di^iHuiBfion 

not for these inspired Adullamites 
who prevent us from resting in sloth- 
ful indifference to evil. 

Most writers of decided individual- 
ity are incited by a more or less icon- 
oclastic impulse. There is an idol they 
want to smash, a conventional lie 
which they want to expose. It is the 
same impulse which moves almost 
every right-minded citizen, once or 
twice in his life, to write a letter of 
protest to the newspaper. Things are 
going wrong in his neighborhood, and 
he is impatient to set them right. 

There are enough real grievances, 
and the full expression of them is a 
public service. But the trouble is that 
any one who develops a decided gift 
in that direction is in danger of be- 
coming the victim of his own talent. 
115 



Eloquent fault - finding becomes a 
mannerism. The original grievance 
loses its sharp outlines ; it, as it were, 
passes from the solid to the gaseous 
state. It becomes vast, pervasive, at- 
mospheric. It is like the London fog, 
enveloping all objects, and causing 
the eyes of those who peer through it 
to smart. 

This happened, in the last genera- 
tion, to Carlyle and Ruskin, and in 
a certain degree to Matthew Arnold. 
Each had his group of enthusiastic 
disciples who responded eagerly to 
their master's call. They renounced 
shams or machine-made articles or 
middle-class Philistinism as the case 
might be. They went in for sincerity, 
or Turner, or "sweetness and light," 
with all the ardor of youthful neo- 
116 



literature of SDi^illu^itin 

phytes. And it was good for them. 
But after a while they became, if not 
exactly weary in well-doing, at least 
a little weary of the unintermittent 
tirades against ill-doing. They were 
in the plight of the good Christian who 
goes to church every Sunday only to 
hear the parson rebuke the sins of the 
people who are not there. The man 
who dated his moral awakening from 
"Sartor Resartus" began to find the 
"Latter Day Pamphlets" wear on his 
nerves. It is good to be awakened; 
but one does not care to have the ris- 
ing bell rung in his ears all day long. 
One must have a little ease, even in 
Zion. 

Ruskin had a real grievance, and so 
had Matthew Arnold. It is too bad 
that so much modern work is poorly 
117 



done ; and it is too bad that the mid- 
dle-class Englishman has a number 
of limitations that are quite obvious 
to his candid friends, — and that his 
American cousin is no better. 

But when all this has been granted, 
why should one talk as if everything 
were going to the dogs ? Why not put 
a cheerful courage on as we work for 
better things ? Even the Philistine 
has his good points, and perhaps may 
be led where he cannot be driven. At 
any rate, he is not likely to be im- 
proved by scolding. 

I am beginning to feel the same way 
even about Ibsen. Time was when 
he had an uncanny power over my 
imagination. He had the wand of a 
disenchanter. Here, I said, is one 
who has the gift of showing us the 
118 



Hiterature of 2Di^ilIu^ion 

thing as it is. There is not a single one 
of these characters whom we have 
not met. Their poor shifts at self- 
deceit are painfully familiar to us. 
In the company of this keen-eyed 
detective we can follow human selfish- 
ness and cowardice through all their 
disguises. The emptiness of conven- 
tional respectabilities and pieties and 
the futility of the spasmodic attempts 
at heroism are obvious enough. 

It was an eclipse of my faith in hu- 
man nature. The eclipse was never 
total because the shadow of the book 
could not quite hide the thought of 
various men and women whom I had 
actually known. 

After a while I began to recover my 
spirits. Why should I be so depressed ? 
This is a big world, and there is room 
119 



in it for many embodiments of good 
and evil. There are all sorts of people, 
and the existence of the bad is no ar- 
gument against the existence of quite 
another sort. 

Let us take realism in literature for 
what it is and no more. It is, at best, 
only a description of an infinitesimal 
bit of reality. The more minutely ac- 
curate it is, the more limited it must 
be in its field. You must not expect 
to get a comprehensive view through 
a high-powered microscope. The au- 
thor is severely limited, not only by 
his choice of a subject, but by his tem- 
perament and by his opportunities for 
observation. He is doing us a favor 
when he focuses our attention upon 
one special object and makes us see it 
clearly. 

120 



Hiterature of SDi^illu^ion 

It is when the realistic writer turns 
philosopher and begins to generalize 
that we must be on our guard against 
him. He is likely' to use his charac- 
ters as symbols, and the symbolism 
becomes oppressive. There are some 
businesses which ought not to be 
united. They hinder healthful com- 
petition and produce a hateful mo- 
nopoly. Thus in some states the rail- 
roads that carried coal also went into 
the business of coal-mining. This has 
been prohibited by law. It is held 
that the railroad, being a common 
carrier, must not be put into a posi- 
tion in which it will be tempted to 
discriminate in favor of its own pro- 
ducts. For a similar reason it may be 
argued that it is dangerous to allow 
the dramatist or novelist to furnish 
121 



us with a "philosophy of life." The 
chances are that, instead of impar- 
tially fulfilling the duties of a common 
carrier, he will foist upon us his own 
goods, and force us to draw conclu- 
sions from the samples of human na- 
ture he has in stock, I should not be 
willing to accept a philosophy of life 
even from so accomplished a person 
as Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not be- 
cause I doubt his cleverness in pre- 
senting what he sees, but because I 
have a suspicion that there are some 
very important things which he does 
not see, or which do not interest him. 
It is really much more satisfactory 
for each one to gather his life philoso- 
phy from his own experience rather 
than from what he reads out of a book, 
or from what he sees on the stage. 
122 



literature of ai^iHu^ion 

"The harvest of a quiet eye" is, 
after all, more satisfying than the oc- 
casional discoveries of the unquiet eye 
that seeks only the brilliantly novel. 

The inevitable discrepancy be- 
tween the literary representations of 
life and life itself has been the cause 
of the ancient feud between teachers 
of morals and writers of fiction. Be- 
cause of this Plato would banish poets 
from his Republic and the Puritans 
would exclude novelists and play- 
actors from their conventicles. But it 
is curious to observe how the char- 
acter of the complaints varies with 
the change in literary fashions. The 
argument of serious persons against 
works of fiction used to be that they 
put too many romantic ideas into the 
reader's head. 

123 



This was the charge made by Mrs. 
Tabitha Tenney, one of the first of 
the long line of American novelists. 
She wrote a novel entitled '* Female 
Quixotism; exhibited in the Roman- 
tic Opinions and Extravagant Ad- 
ventures of Dorcasina Sheldon." The 
work was addressed **to all Colum- 
bian Young Ladies who read Novels 
and Romances." To these young 
ladies the solemn advice of Mrs. Tab- 
itha Tenney was, "Don't." 

Miss Dorcasina was certainly a 
distressing example. "At the age of 
three years this child had the mis- 
fortune to lose an excellent mother, 
whose advice would have pointed out 
to her the plain, rational path of life, 
and prevented her imagination from 
being filled with the airy delusions 
124 



ttitetatute of 2Di^iMu^ion 

and visionary dreams of love and rap- 
tures, darts, fire and flames, with 
which the indiscreet writers of that 
fascinating kind of books denomi- 
nated Novels fill the heads of artless 
young girls to their great injury, and 
sometimes to their utter ruin." Her 
father allowed her to indulge her 
fancy, ** never considering their dan- 
gerous tendency to a young, inexpe- 
rienced female mind." The various 
calamities into which Miss Dorcas- 
ina Sheldon fell may be imagined 
by those who have not the patience 
to search for them upon the printed 
pages. Her parting words to those 
who had the guardianship of female 
minds had great solemnity. "With- 
hold from their eyes the pernicious 
volumes, which while they convey 
125 



false ideas of life, and inspire illusory 
expectations, will tend to keep them 
ignorant of everything worth know- 
ing; and which if they do not even- 
tually render them miserable may at 
least prevent them from becoming 
respectable. Suffer not their imagi- 
nations to be filled with ideas of hap- 
piness, particularly in the connubial 
state, which can never be realized." 
If Mrs. Tabitha Tenney were to 
come to life in our day I think she 
would hardly feel like warning the 
Columbian young ladies against the 
effect of works of fiction in exaggerat- 
ing the happiness of life in general or 
of the connubial state in particular. 
The young ladies are much more in 
danger of having their spirits de- 
pressed by the painstaking represen- 
126 



Utterature of SDi^tHu^ion 

tation of miseries they are never likely 
to experience. The gloomy views of 
average human nature which once 
were conscientiously expounded by 
"painful preachers" are now taken 
up by painful play- Wrights and story- 
tellers. Under the spell of powerful 
imaginations it is quite possible to see 
this world as nothing but a vale of 
tears. 

Happily there is always a way of 
escape for those who are quick-witted 
enough to think of it in time. When 
fiction offers us only arid actualities, 
we can flee from it into the romance 
of real life. 

I sympathize with a young philoso- 
pher of my acquaintance. He took 
great joy in a Jack-o-lantern. The 
ruddy countenance of the pumpkin 
127 



was the very picture of geniality. 
Good-will gleamed from the round 
eyes, and the mouth was one lumi- 
nous smile. No wonder that he asked 
the privilege of taking it to bed with 
him. He shouted gleefully when it 
was left on the table. 

But when he was alone Mr. Jack- 
o-lantern assumed a more grimly 
realistic aspect. There was some- 
thing sinister in the squint of his eye, 
and uncanny in the way his rubicund 
nose gleamed. On entering the room 
a little while after I found it in dark- 
ness. 

"What has become of your Jack- 
o-lantern ?'' 

"He was making faces at me. I 
looked at him till I 'most got scared, 
so I just got up and blew him out." 
128 



literature of aDi^iHujefton 

I commended my philosopher for 
his good sense. It is the way to do 
with Jack-o-lanterns wh^n they be- 
come unmannerly. 

And I believe that it is the best 
way to treat distressing works of the 
imagination, though I know that 
their authors, who take themselves 
solemnly, will resent this advice. 

We can't blow out a reality, just 
because it happens to make us miser- 
able. We must face it. It is a part of 
the discipline of life. But a book or 
a play has no such right to domineer 
over us. Our own imagination has 
the first rights in its own home. If 
some other person's imagination in- 
trudes and "makes faces," it is our 
privilege to blow it out. 



IV 

€lje 9fgnomxnp of 25eittg 




€l|e S^gnomittp of Otitis 

As I have already intimated, my great- 
est intellectual privilege is my ac- 
quaintance with a philosopher. He 
is not one of those unsocial philoso- 
phers who put their best thoughts into 
books to be kept in cold storage for 
posterity. My Philosopher is emi- 
nently social, and is conversational in 
his method. He belongs to the ancient 
133 



CJt S^gnominp of 

school of the Peripatetics, and the 
more rapidly he is moving the more 
satisfactory is the flow of his ideas. 

He is a great believer in the Socra- 
tic method. He feels that a question is 
its own excuse for being. The proper 
answer to a question is not a stupid 
affirmation that would close the con- 
versation, but another question. The 
questions follow one another with 
extreme rapidity. He acts upon my 
mind like an air pump. His questions 
speedily exhaust my small stock of 
acquired information. Into the men- 
tal vacuum thus produced rush all 
sorts of irrelevant ideas, which we 
proceed to share. In this way there 
comes a sense of intellectual comrade- 
ship which one does not have with 
most philosophers. 
134 



For four years my Philosopher has 
been interrogating Nature, and he 
has not begun to exhaust the subject. 
Though he has accumulated a good 
deal of experience, he is still in his intel- 
lectual prime. He has not yet reached 
the "school age," which in most per- 
sons marks the beginning of the senile 
decay of the poetic imagination. 

In my walks and talks with my Phi- 
losopher I have often been amazed at 
my own limitations. Things which 
are so easy for him are so difficult for 
me. Particularly is this the case in re- 
gard to the more fundamental prin- 
ciples of philosophy. All philosophy, 
as we know, is the search for the 
Good, the True, and the Beautiful. 
These words represent only the pri- 
mary colors of the moral spectrum. 
135 



€l|e S^0tt0inittp of 

Each one is broken up into any num- 
ber of secondary colors. Thus the 
Good ranges all the way from the 
good to eat to the good to sacrifice 
one's self for; the Beautiful ascends 
from the most trifling prettiness to 
the height of the spiritually sublime; 
while the True takes in all manner of 
verities, great and small. In compar- 
ing notes with my Philosopher I am 
chagrined at my own color-blindness. 
He recognizes so many superlative 
excellences to which I am stupidly 
oblivious. 

In one of our walks we stop at the 
grocer's, I having been asked to fill 
the office of domestic purveyor. It is 
a case where the office has sought the 
man, and not the man the office. Lest 
136 



we forget, everything has been writ- 
ten down so that a wayfaring man, 
though a fool, need not err therein, 
— baking-powder and coffee and a 
dozen eggs, and last and least, and 
under no circumstances to be forgot- 
ten, a cake of condensed yeast. These 
things weigh upon my spirits. The 
thought of that little yeastcake shuts 
out any disinterested view of the store. 
It is nothing to me but a prosaic col- 
lection of the necessaries of life. I am 
uncheered by any sense of romantic 
adventure. 

Not so with my Philosopher. He is 
in the rosy dawn of expectation. The 
doors are opened, and he enters into 
an enchanted country. His eyes grow 
large as he looks about him. He sees 
visions of the Good, the True, and the 
137 



€l)e S^snominp of 

Beautiful in all their bewildering, con- 
crete variety. They are in barrels and 
boxes and paper bundles. They rise 
toward the sky in shelves that reach 
at last the height of the gloriously 
unattainable. He walks through the 
vales of Arcady, among pickles and 
cheeses. He lifts up his eyes wonder- 
ingly to snowy Olympus crowned with 
Pillsbury's Best. He discovers a 
magic fountain, not spurting up as if 
it were but for a moment, but issuing 
forth with the mysterious slowness 
that befits the liquefactions of the 
earlier world. "What is that.^" he 
asks, and I can hardly frame the 
prosaic word "Molasses." 

" Molasses !" he cries, gurgling with 
content; "what a pretty word!" I 
had n't thought about it, but it is a 
138 



pretty word, and it has come straight 
down from the Greek word for honey. 

He discovers works of art. Sur- 
prising pictures, glowing in color, are 
on the walls. These are cherubs riot- 
ing in health, smiling old men, benig- 
nant matrons, radiant maidens, all 
feasting on nectar and ambrosia. 
Here and there is a pale ascetic, with 
a look of agony on his emaciated face. 

"What makes that man feel so 
bad.?" asks my Philosopher, anxious 
to extract a story from the picture. It 
seems like an inadequate explanation 
to say that he is only a martyr to his 
own folly in not getting the right kind 
of breakfast food. 

For one thing, my Philosopher has 
a great physical advantage over me 
when it comes to seeing things. His 
139 



€f)e S^gnommp of 

eyes are only two feet ten inches from 
the ground, while mine are some five 
feet ten. Three feet do not count for 
much when we are considering astro- 
nomical distances, but they make a 
great difference in the way things 
seem. There is a difference in the 
horizon line, and the realm of mystery 
begins much nearer. There is no dis- 
enchanting bird's-eye view of the 
counter with all things thereon. There 
are alluring glimpses of piled -up 
wealth. 

There particularly is the land of the 
heart's desire in a square glass-cov- 
ered case. There are many beautiful 
things in the store to be admired from 
below; but one supremely beautiful 
and delectable object is the crowning 
glory of the place. 
140 



Otitis aBroton:^2lp 

The artist who spends his life in 
attempting to minister to dull adult 
sensibilities never created a master- 
piece that gave such pure delight as 
the candy dog which my Philosopher 
spies. 

"See the dog!" It is, indeed, a 
miracle of impressionist art. It is not 
like the dogs that bite. It offers itself 
alluringly to the biter, — or rather 
to one who would leisurely absorb it. 
Even now there is a vagueness of out- 
line that suggests the still vaguer out- 
lines it will have when it comes into 
the possession of a person of taste. 

This treasure can be procured for 
one copper cent. My Philosopher feels 
that it is a wise investment, and I 
thoroughly agree with him. However 
much the necessaries of life may have 
141 



€^t S^sttommp of 

advanced in price, the prime luxuries 
are still within the reach of all. We 
still have much to be thankful for 
when with one cent we can purchase 
a perfect bliss. 

It is all so interesting and satisfac- 
tory that we feel that the visit to the 
grocer's has been a great success. It 
is only when we are halfway home 
that we remember the yeastcake. 

Sometimes my Philosopher insists 
upon my telling him a story. Then I 
am conscious of my awkwardness. It 
is as if my imagination were an old 
work-horse suddenly released from its 
accustomed tip-cart and handed over 
to a gay young knight who is setting 
forth in quest of dragons. It is blind 
of both eyes, and cannot see a dragon 
142 



any more, and only shies, now and 
then, when it comes to a place where 
it saw one long ago. There is an ele- 
ment of insincerity in these occasional 
frights which does not escape the clear- 
eyed critic. It gets scared at the 
wrong times, and forgets to prance 
when prancing is absolutely demanded 
by the situation. 

When my Philosopher tells a story, 
it is all that a story ought to be. There 
is no labored introduction, no tire- 
some analysis. It is pure story, ''of 
imagination all compact." Things 
happen with no long waits between 
the scenes. Everything is instantly 
moulded to the heart's desire. 

" Once upon a time there was a little 
boy. And he wanted to be a cock-a- 
doodle-doo. So he was a cock-a-doo- 
143 



€fte ^Pgnomtnp of 

dle-doo. And he wanted to fly up into 
the sky. So he did fly up into the sky. 
And he wanted to get wings and a 
tail. So he did get some wings and a 
tail." 

Physiologists tell us that the trouble 
with advancing years is that the ma- 
terial which in youth went directly 
to building up the vital organs is di- 
verted to the connective tissue, so that 
after a time there gets to be too much 
connective tissue and too little to 
connect. When the imagination is in 
its first freshness, a story is almost 
without connective tissue. There 
seems hardly enough to hold it to- 
gether. There is nothing to take our 
minds off the successive happenings. 
If it is deemed desirable that a little 
boy should be a cock-a-doodle-doo, 
144 



then he is a cock-a-doodle-doo. All 
else is labor and sorrow. 

As a listener my Philosopher is no 
less successful than as an improviser. 
He is not one of those fickle hearers 
whose demands for some new thing 
are the ruination of literary art. 
When he finds something beautiful it 
is a joy to him forever,' and its love- 
liness increases with each repetition. 
In a classic tale he is quick to resent 
the slightest change in phraseology. 
There is a just severity in his rebuke 
when, in order to give a touch of 
novelty, I mix up the actions appro- 
priate to the big bear, the little bear, 
and the middle-sized bear. This 
clumsy attempt at originality by 
means of a willful perversion of the 
truth oflEends him. If a person can't 
145 



€l)e 3^gttominp of 

be original without making a mess of 
it, why try to be original at all ? 

With what keen expectancy he 
awaits each inevitable word, and how 
pleased he is to find that everything 
comes out as he expected! He re- 
serves his full emotion for the true 
dramatic climax. If a great tragedian 
could be assured of having such an 
appreciative audience, how pleasant 
would be the pathway of art! The 
tragedy of Cock Robin reaches its 
hundredth night with no apparent 
falling off in interest. It is followed 
as only the finest critic will listen to 
the greatest actor of an immortal 
drama. He is perfectly familiar with 
the text, and knows where the thrills 
come in. When the fatal arrow pierces 
Cock Robin's breast, it never fails to 
146 



bring an appreciative exclamation, 
'*He's killed Cock Robin!" 

Of the niceties of science my Phi- 
losopher takes little account, yet he 
loves to frequent the Museum of Nat- 
ural History, and is on terms of inti- 
macy with many of the stuffed animals. 
He walks as a small Adam in this 
Paradise, giving to each creature its 
name. His taste is catholic, and while 
he delights in the humming birds, he 
does not therefore scorn the less bril- 
liant hippopotamus. He has no re- 
pugnance to an ugliness that is only 
skin deep. He reserves his disappro- 
bation for an ugliness that seems to 
be a visible sign of inner ungracious- 
ness. The small monkeys he finds 
amusing; but he grows grave as he 
passes on to the larger apes, and be- 
147 



€^t ^^snominp of 

gins to detect in them a caricature 
of their betters. When we reach the 
orang-outang he says, '*Now let's go 
home." Once outside the building, he 
remarks, ''I don't like mans when 
they're not made nice." I agree with 
him ; for I myself am something of a 
misanthropoidist . 

There is nothing unusual about my 
Philosopher. He is not a prodigy or a 
genius. He is what a normal human 
being is at the age of four, when he is 
still in possession of all his faculties. 
Having eyes he sees with them, and 
having ears he hears with them. Hav- 
ing a little mind of his own, he uses it 
on whatever comes to hand, trying its 
edge on everything, just as he would 
try a jackknife if I would let him. He 
148 



wants to cut into things and see what 
they are made of. He wants to try ex- 
periments. He does n't care how they 
come out; he knows they will come 
out some way or other. Having an 
imagination, he imagines things, and 
his imagination being healthy, the 
things he imagines are very pleasant. 
In this way he comes to have a very 
good time with his own mind. More- 
over, he is a very little person in a 
very big world, and he is wise enough 
to know it. So instead of confining 
himself to the things he understands, 
which would not be enough to nourish 
his life, he manages to get a good deal 
of pleasure out of the things he does 
not understand, and so he has "an 
endless fountain of immortal drink." 
What becomes of these imagina- 
149 



€I^e S^snomittp of 

tive, inquisitive, myth-making, light- 
hearted, tender - hearted, and alto- 
gether charming young adventurers 
who start out so gayly to explore the 
wonder- world ? 

The solemn answer comes, "They 
after a while are grown-up." Did you 
ever meditate on that catastrophe 
which we speak of as being "grown- 
up"? Habit has dulled our per- 
ception of the absurd anti- climax 
involved in it. You have only to 
compare the two estates to see that 
something has been lost. 

You linger for a moment when the 
primary school has been dismissed. 
For a little while the stream of youth- 
ful humanity flows sluggishly as be- 
tween the banks of a canal, but once 
beyond the school limits it returns 
150 



to nature. It is a bright, foaming 
torrent. Not a moment is wasted. 
The little girls are at once exchanging 
confidences, and the little boys are 
in Valhalla, where the heroes make 
friends with one another by indulg- 
ing in everlasting assault and battery, 
and continually arise "refreshed with 
blows." There is no question about 
their being all alive and actively in- 
terested in one another. All the natu- 
ral reactions are exhibited in the most 
interesting manner. 

Then you get into a street car, in- 
vented by an ingenious misanthropist 
to give you the most unfavorable view 
possible of your kind. On entering 
you choose a side, unless you are con- 
demned to be suspended in the middle. 
Then you look at your antagonists on 
151 



€fit S^snomittp of 

the opposite side. What a long, unre- 
lenting row of humanity! These are 
the grown-ups. You look for some 
play of emotion, some evidence of cu- 
riosity, pleasure, exhilaration, such as 
you might naturally expect from those 
who are taking a little journey in the 
world. 

Not a sign of any such emotion do 
you discern. They are not adventur- 
ing into a wonder- world. They are 
only getting over the ground. One 
feels like putting up a notice: "Lost, 
somewhere on the road between in- 
fancy and middle age, several valu- 
able faculties. The finder will find 
something to his advantage." 

I have no quarrel with Old Age. 
It should be looked upon as a reward 
of merit to be cheerfully striven for. 
152 



Old Age hath still his honor and his toil. 

Nor do I object to the process of 
growth. It belongs to the order of 
nature. Growing is like falling, — it 
is all right so long as you keep on; 
the trouble comes when you stop. 

What I object to is the fatalistic 
way in which people acquiesce in the 
arrest of their own mental develop- 
ment. Adolescence is exciting. All 
sorts of things are happening, and 
more are promised. Life rushes on 
with a sweet tumult. All things seem 
possible. It seems as if a lot of the 
unfinished business of the world is 
about to be put through with enthu- 
siasm. Then, just as the process has 
had a fair start, some evil spirit inter- 
venes and says : " Time 's up ! You 've 
grown all you are to be allowed to. 
153 



€I>e ^Fgnommp of 

Now you must settle down, — and 
be quick about it ! No more adolesc- 
ing; you are adults!" 

Poor adults! Nature seems to 
have been like an Indian giver, tak- 
ing away the gifts as soon as they 
are received, — 

The gifts of morn 
Ere life grows noisy and slower-footed thought 
Can overtake the rapture of the sense. 

The extinction of the early poetry 
and romance which gave beauty to the 
first view of these realities has often 
been accomplished by the most delib- 
erate educational processes. There 
are two kinds of education, — that 
which educates, and that which erad- 
icates. The latter is the easier and 
the more ancient method. 

Wordsworth writes : — 
154 



Oh, many are the poets that are sown 

By Nature, men endowed with highest gifts, 

The vision and the faculty divine. 

But with this broad-sowing of the 
highest gifts it is astonishing how few 
come to maturity. I imagine that the 
Educational Man with the Hoe is re- 
sponsible for a good deal of the loss. 
In his desire for clean culture he 
treats any sproutings of the faculty 
divine as mere weeds, if they come 
up between the rows. 

If the Educational Man with the 
Hoe is to be feared, the Educational 
Man with the Pruning Shears is an 
equal menace. 

There is an art, once highly es- 
teemed, called topiary. The object 
of topiary when carried to excess was 
155 



€fte ^fgttomtnp of 

to take a tree, preferably a yew tree, 
and by careful trimming to make it 
look like something else, say a pea- 
cock standing under an umbrella. Cu- 
rious effects could be produced in this 
way, leafy similitudes of birds and 
animals could be made so that the 
resemblance was almost as striking as 
if they had been cut out of ginger- 
bread. 

The object of educational topiary 
is to take a child, and, by careful 
pruning away of all his natural pro- 
pensities, make of him a miniature 
grown-up. It is an interesting art, 
for it shows what can be done; the 
only wonder is why any one should 
want to do it. If you would see this 
art at its best, turn to Miss Edge- 
worth's ''Frank," a book much ad- 
156 



mired in its day. Frank, to begin 
with, was a very likable little boy. If 
he was not made of the ''sugar and 
spice and all things nice" that little 
girls are made of, he had all the more 
homely miscellaneous ingredients that 
little boys are made of. The prob- 
lem of the careful father and mother 
was to take Frank and reduce him in 
the shortest possible time to the adult 
frame of mind. To this end they 
sought out any vagrant fancies and in- 
quisitive yearnings and wayward ad- 
venturousness, and destroyed them. 
This slaughter of the innocents con- 
tinued till Frank's mind was a model 
of propriety. 

It was hard work, but there was 
a satisfaction in doing it thoroughly. 
The evening meal was transformed 
157 



€f)e S^sttominp of 

into a purgatorial discipline, and as 
he progressed from course to course 
Frank's mind was purified as by fire. 

Here is one occasion. There was 
a small plumcake, and Frank was 
required to divide it so that each of 
the five persons present should have 
a just share. Frank began to cut the 
cake, but by a mistake cut it into six 
pieces instead of five. 

This miscarriage of justice sent 
dismay into the hearts of his parents. 
They felt that he was at the parting 
of the ways. It was a great moral 
crisis, in which his character was to 
be revealed. What would Frank do 
with that sixth piece of cake.^^ Per- 
haps — horrible thought ! — he might 
eat it. From this crime he was saved 
only to fall into the almost equal sin 
158 



of unscientific charity. In order to 
save trouble he proposed to give the 
extra piece to his father, and when 
questioned he could give no better 
reason than that he thought his fa- 
ther liked cake. 

'**What right have you to give it 
to any of us.^ You were to judge 
about the size of the pieces, and you 
were to take care that we each have 
our just share. But you are going to 
give one of us twice as much as any 
of the others.' " 

Justice triumphed. *' Frank took 
the trouble to think, and he then cut 
the spare bit of cake into fiive equal 
parts, and he put these parts by the 
side of the five large pieces and gave 
one of the large and one of the small 
pieces to each person, and he then 
159 



€&e S^flttommp of 

said: 'I believe I have divided the 
cake fairly now.' Everybody present 
said 'yes,' and everybody looked care- 
fully at each of the shares, and there 
appeared exactly the same quantity 
in each share. So each person took a 
share, and all were satisfied." 

That is to say, all were satisfied ex- 
cept Frank's mother. She was afraid 
that the family meal had not yielded 
its full educational value. 

" ' My dear Frank,' said his mother, 
'as you have divided the cake so 
fairly, let us see how you will divide 
the sugar that was upon the top of 
the cake, and which is now broken 
and crumbled to pieces in the plate. 
We all like sugar; divide it equally 
amongst us.' 

"'But this will be very difficult to 
160 



do, mamma, because the pieces of 
sugar are of such different sizes and 
shapes. I do not know how I shall 
ever divide it exactly. Will it do if I do 
not divide it quite exactly, ma'am.?' 

"*No,' said his mother, *I beg you 
will divide it quite exactly.' " 

Frank gathered his fragments into 
five little mounds, and after carefully 
measuring their height, declared that 
they were equal. 

"'They are of the same length and 
breadth, I acknowledge,' said the fa- 
ther, *but they are not of the same 
thickness.' 

*"Oh, thickness! I never thought 
of thickness.' 

"*But you should have thought of 
it,' said his father." 

At last Frank, seeing that there 
161 



€l|e 3P0tt0mittp of 

was no other way to satisfy the de- 
mands of distributive justice, went to 
the closet, and brought forth a pair 
of scales. "By patiently adding and 
taking away, he at last made them 
each of the same weight, and every- 
body was satisfied with the accuracy 
of the division." 

This habit of accuracy, developed 
in the family meals, saved them from 
the temptation of wasting time in flip- 
pant conversation. 

Miss Edgeworth's most striking 
plea for grown-up-edness versus child- 
ish curiosity was elaborated in her 
story of Frank and his orrery. Frank 
had read of an orrery in which the 
motions of the planets were shown by 
ingenious mechanism. Being a small 
boy, he naturally desired to make one. 
162 



For several days he almost forgot 
about his Roman History and Latin 
Grammar and the "Stream of 
Time/' so absorbed was he in mak- 
ing his orrery. He had utilized his 
mother's tambour frame and knit- 
ting needles; and wires and thread 
held together his planets, which were 
made of worsted balls. It was a 
wonderful universe which Frank had 
created — as many great philosophers 
before him had created theirs — out 
of the inner consciousness. When it 
had been constructed to the best of his 
ability, the only question was, would 
his universe work, — would his plan- 
ets go singing around the sun, or was 
there to be a crash of worlds ? Frank 
knew no other way than to put it to 
the test of action, and he invited the 
163 



€l)e S^gnommp of 

family to witness the great experiment. 
He pointed out with solemn joy his 
worsted earth, moon, and planets, and 
predicted their revolutions according 
to his astronomy. 

But the moment his father's eye 
rested upon it all, he saw that it was 
absurd. 

He ''pointed out the defects, the 
deficiencies, the mistakes, — in one 
word, the absurdities, — but he did 
not use that offensive word, for he was 
tender of Frank's feelings for his 
wasted work." 

"'Well, papa,' said Mary, 'what is 
your advice to Frank .^' 

"'My first advice to you, Frank,' 
said his father, 'and indeed the con- 
dition upon which I now stay and 
give up my time to you is that you 
164 



abide steadily by whatever resolution 
you now make, either quite to finish 
or quite to give up this orrery. If you 
choose to finish it you must give up 
for some time reading anything en- 
tertaining or instructive; you must 
give up arithmetic and history.' 

'' ' And the '' Stream of Time" and 
the lists .P' said Mary. 

"'Everything,' said his father, 'to 
the one object of making an orrery, — 
and when made as well as you possi- 
bly could with my assistance make it, 
observe that it will only be what others 
have repeatedly made before. . . . 
Master Frank will grow older, and 
when or why or how he made this 
orrery few will know or care, but all 
will see whether he has the knowledge 
which is necessary for a man and a 
165 



€5e S^gnominp of 

gentleman to possess. Now choose, 
Frank.'" 

Frank seized the orrery. "'Mary, 
bring your work basket, my dear,' 
said he. 

"And he pulled off one by one, de- 
liberately, the worsted sun, moon, 
earth, and stars, and threw them into 
the work basket which Mary held. 
Mary sighed, but Frank did not sigh. 
He was proud to give his father a proof 
of his resolution, and when he looked 
around he saw tears, but they were 
tears of pleasure, in his mother's eyes. 

"'Are you sure yet that I can keep 
to my good resolution ? ' 

"'I am not quite sure, but this is a 
good beginning,' said his father." 

The aim of all this discipline was 
to make Frank just like his father. 
166 



Now I am not saying anything against 
Frank's father. He was a truly good 
man, and well-to-do. Still, there have 
always been so many just like him that 
it would not have done much harm if 
Frank had been allowed to be a little 
different. 

I cannot help thinking how differ- 
ent was a contemporary of his, Michael 
Faraday. Faraday had not any one 
to look after him in his youth, and to 
keep him from making unnecessary 
experiments. When he felt like mak- 
ing an experiment he did so. There 
was no one to tell him how it would 
come out, so he had to wait to see how 
it did come out. In this way he wasted 
a good deal of time that might have 
been spent in learning the things 
that every educated Englishman was 
167 



€|^e S^enominp of 

expected to know, and he found out 
a good many things that the edu- 
cated Englishman did not know, — 
this caused him to be always a little 
out of the fashion. 

He let curiosity get the better of 
him, and when he was quite well on 
in years he would try to do things 
with pith-balls and electric currents, 
just as Frank tried to do things with 
worsted balls before his father showed 
him the folly of it. Some of his experi- 
ments turned out to be very useful, but 
most of them did not. Some of them 
only proved that what people thought 
they knew was not so. Faraday seemed 
to be just as much interested in this 
kind as in the other. He never learned 
to mind only his own business, but 
was always childishly inquisitive, so 
168 



he never was so sure of things as was 
Frank's father. 

Still, it takes all sorts of people to 
make up a world, and if a person can- 
not be like Frank's father, it is not so 
bad to be like Faraday. 

Frank's father would have been 
shocked at Faraday's first introduc- 
tion to the problems of metaphy- 
sical speculation. "I remember," he 
says, "being a great questioner when 
young." And one of his first ques- 
tions was in regard to the seat of 
the soul. The question was suggested 
in this way. Being a small boy, and 
seeing the bars of an iron railing, he 
felt called upon to try experimentally 
whether he could squeeze through. 
The experiment was only a partial 
169 



€l^t S^gnominp of 

success. He got his head through, but 
he could not get it back. Then the phy- 
sical difficulty suggested the great met- 
aphysical question, "On which side 
of the fence am I.^" 

Frank's father would have said that 
that was neither the time nor the 
place for such speculation, and that 
the proper way to study philosophy 
was to wait till one could sit down in 
a chair and read it out of a book. 
But to Faraday the thoughts he got 
out of a book never seemed to be 
so interesting as those which came to 
him while he was stuck in the fence. 

When Frank learned a few lines of 
poetry, he asked to be allowed to say 
them to his father. 

"'I think,' said his mother, 'your 
father would like you to repeat them 
170 



if you understand them all, but not 
otherwise.'" 

Of course that was the end of any 
nonsense in that direction. If Frank 
was kept away from any poetry he 
could not altogether understand, he 
would soon be grown-up, so that he 
would not be tempted by any kind of 
poetry any more than his father was. 

I am sure Frank's father would have 
disapproved of the way my Philoso- 
pher takes his poetry. His favorite 
poem is "A frog he would a- wooing 
go," — especially the first quatrain. 
His analysis is very defective ; he takes 
it as a whole. He likes the mystery of 
it, the quick action, the hearty, incon- 
sequent refrain: — 

A frog he would a- wooing go — 
Heigh ho ! says Rowley — 

171 



€l^e ^Fgnominp of 

Whether his mother would let him or no — 
With a rowly-powly, gammon and spinach. 
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley. 

This to him is poetry. Everything is 
lifted above the commonplace. The 
frog is no cousin to the vulgar hop- 
toad, whose presence in the garden, in 
spite of his usefulness, is an affront. 
He is a creature of romance; he is 
going a-wooing, — whatever that may 
be ; — he only knows that it is some- 
thing dangerous. And what a glorious 
line that is, — 

Whether his mother would let him or no. 

It thrills him like the sound of a trum- 
pet. And great, glorious Anthony 
Rowley! It needs no footnote to tell 
about him. It is enough to know that 
Rowley is a great, jovial soul, who, 
when the poetry is going to his liking, 
172 



cries, " Heigh ho ! " — and when Row- 
ley cries, '* Heigh ho ! " my Philosopher 
cries, "Heigh ho!" too, just to keep 
him company. And so the poem goes 
on "with a rowly-powly, gammon 
and spinach," and nobody knows 
what it means. That's the secret. 

Now I should not wish my Phi- 
losopher always to look upon "A frog 
he would a- wooing go" as the high- 
water mark of poetical genius; but I 
should wish him to bring to better 
poetry the same hearty relish he 
brings to this. The rule should be, — 

Now good digestion wait on appetite, 
And health on both. 

When I see persons who upon the altar 
of education have sacrificed digestion, 
appetite, and health, I cannot but 
feel that something is wrong. I am 
173 



€I|e ^Fsnommp of 

reminded of an inscription which I 
found on a tombstone in a Vermont 
churchyard : — 

Here lies cut down like unripe fruit 
The only son of Amos Toot. 



Behold the amazing alteration 
Brought about by inoculation: 
The means employed his life to save 
Hurled him, untimely, to the grave. 

Sometimes the good housewife has 
chosen carefully every ingredient for 
her cake, and has obeyed conscien- 
tiously the mandates of the cookbook. 
She has with Pharisaic scrupulosity 
taken four eggs and no more, and 
two cups of sugar, and two teaspoon- 
fuls of sifted flour, and a pinch of 
baking powder, and a small teacupf ul 
of hot water. She has beaten the eggs 
very light and stirred in the flour only 
174 



seeing ^Brotoiir^ap 

a little at a time. She has beaten the 
dough and added granulated sugar 
with discretion. She has resisted the 
temptation to add more flour when 
she has been assured that it would not 
be good for the cake. And then she 
has placed the work of her hands in 
a moderately hot oven, after which she 
awaits the consummation of her hopes. 
In due time she looks into the mod- 
erately hot oven, and finds only a sod- 
den mass. Something has happened 
to the cake. 

Such accidents happen in the best 
of attempts at education. The out- 
come is disappointing. The ingredi- 
ents of the educational cake are ex- 
cellent, and an immense amount of 
faithful work has been put into it, but 
sometimes it does not rise. As the 
175 



€&e 9^0nommp of 

old-fashioned housekeeper would say, 
it looks "sad." 

It is easier to find fault with the 
result than to point out the remedy ; 
but so long as such results frequently 
happen, the business of the home and 
the school is full of fascinating and 
disconcerting uncertainty. One thing 
is obvious, and that is that it is no 
more safe for the teacher than for the 
preacher to "banish Nature from his 
plan." Of course the reason we tried 
to banish Nature in the first place was 
not because we bore her any ill-will, 
but only because she was all the time 
interfering with our plans. 

The fact is that Nature is not very 
considerate of our grown-up pre- 
judices. She does not set such store 
by our dearly bought acquirements 
176 



as we do. She is more concerned 
about *'the process of becoming" 
than about the thing which we have 
already become. She is quite cap- 
able of taking the finished product 
upon which we had prided ourselves 
and using it as the raw material out of 
which to make something else. Of 
course this tries our temper. We do 
not like to see our careful finishing 
touches treated in that way. 

Especially does Nature upset our 
adult notions about the relations 
between teaching and learning. We 
exalt the function of teaching, and 
seem to imagine that it might go on 
automatically. We sometimes think 
of the teacher as a lawgiver, and of 
the learner as one who with docility 
receives what is graciously given. 
177 



€f)e 3f0nommp of 

But the law to be understood and 
obeyed is the law of the learner's 
mind, and not that of the teacher's. 
The didactic method must be sub- 
ordinated to the vital. Teaching may 
be developed into a very neat and 
orderly system, but learning is apt 
to be quite disorderly. It is likely to 
come by fits and starts, and when it 
does come it is very exciting. 

Those who have had the good for- 
tune in mature life to learn something 
have described the experience as be- 
ing quite upsetting. They have found 
out something that they had never 
known before, and the discovery was 
so overpowering that they could not 
pay attention to what other people 
were telling them. 

Kepler describes his sensations 
178 



when he discovered the law of planet- 
ary motion. He could not keep still. 
He forgot that he was a sober, middle- 
aged person, and acted as if he were 
a small boy who had just got the 
answer to his sum in vulgar fractions. 
Nobody had helped him; he had 
found it out for himself ; and now he 
could go out and play. "Let nothing 
confine me : I will indulge my sacred 
ecstasy. I will triumph over man- 
kind. ... If you forgive me, I re- 
joice ; if you are angry, I cannot help 
it." In fact, Kepler did n't care 
whether school kept or not. 

Now in the first years of our exist- 
ence we are in the way of making 
first-rate discoveries every day. No 
wonder that we find it so hard to keep 
still and to listen respectfully to people 
179 



€l|e S^gnominp of 

whose knowledge is merely remin- 
iscent. Above all, it is difficult for us 
to keep our attention fixed on their 
mental processes when our minds 
make forty revolutions to their one. 

There, for instance, is the Alpha- 
bet. Because the teacher told us 
about it yesterday she is grieved that 
we do not remember what she said. 
But so many surprising things have 
happened since then that it takes a 
little time for us to make sure that it's 
the same old Alphabet this morning 
that we had the other day. She is the 
victim of preconceived ideas on the 
subject, but our minds are open to 
conviction. Most of the letters still 
look unfamiliar; but when we really 
do learn to recognize Big A and Round 
O, we are disposed to indulge our 
180 



sacred ecstasy and to "triumph over 
mankind." 

If the teacher be a sour person who 
has long ago completed her educa- 
tion, she will take this occasion to 
chide us for not paying attention to a 
new letter that is just swimming into 
our ken. If, however, she is fortun- 
ate enough to be one who keeps on 
learning, she will share the triumph 
of our achievement, for she knows 
how it feels. 

There is coming to be a greater 
sympathy between teachers and learn- 
ers, as there is a clearer knowledge 
of the way the mind grows. But even 
yet one may detect a certain note of 
condescension in the treatment of the 
characteristics of early childhood. The 
child, we say, has eager curiosity, a 
181 



€l)e S^gnominp of 

myth-making imagination, a sensitive- 
ness to momentary impressions, a de- 
sire to make things and to destroy 
things, a tendency to imitate what he 
admires. His mind goes out not in 
one direction, but in many directions. 
Then we say, in our solemn, grown-up 
way : "Why, that is just hke Primitive 
Man, and how unlike Us ! It has taken 
a long time to transform Primitive 
Man into Us, but if we start soon 
enough we may eradicate the primi- 
tive things before they have done much 
harm." 

What we persistently fail to under- 
stand is that in these primitive things 
are the potentialities of all the most 
lasting satisfactions of later life. 

Browning tells us how the boy 
182 



David felt when he watched his 

sheep : — 

Then fancies grew rife 
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when 

round me the sheep 
Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled 

slow as in sleep; 
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world 

that might lie 
*Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt 

the hill and the sky: 
And I laughed, — "Since my days are ordained 

to be passed with my flocks, 
Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains 

and the rocks. 
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and 

image the show 
Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly 

shall know." 

All this is natural enough, we say, 
in a mere boy, — but he will outgrow 
it. But now and then some one does 
not outgrow it. He has become a man, 
and yet in his mind fancies are still 
183 



€i)e 2F0tt0mmp of 

rife. They throng upon him and crave 
expression. The things he sees, the 
people he meets, are all symbols to him, 
just as the one eagle which ** wheeled 
slow as in sleep" was to the shepherd 
lad the symbol of a great unknown 
world. That which he sees of the 
actual world seems still to him only 
a strip " 'twixt the hill and the sky," 
— all the rest he imagines. He fills 
it with vivid color and absorbing life. 
He peoples it with his own thoughts. 
We call such a person a poet ; and 
if he is a very good poet, we call him 
a genius; and, in order to do him 
honor, we pretend that we cannot 
understand him, and we employ 
people to explain him to us. We treat 
his works as alcohol is treated in the 
arts. It is, as they say, " denaturized," 
184 



that is, something is put into it that 
people don't like, so that they will not 
drink it "on the sly!" 

Yet all the time the plain fact is 
that the poet is simply a person who 
is still in possession of all his early 
qualities. Wordsworth gave away the 
secret. He is a boy who keeps on 
growing. He is 

One whose heart the holy forms 
Of young imagination have kept pure. 

Where others see a finished world, he 
sees all things as manifestations of a 
free power. 

Even in their fixed and steady lineaments 
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind» 
Expression ever varying. 

This ebbing and flowing mind with 

its ever-changing expression is the 

charm of early childhood. It is the 

185 



€^t S^gnommp of 

charm of all genius as well. Turn to 
Shelley's "Skylark." The student of 
Child Psychology never found more 
images chasing one another through 
the mind. The fancies follow one 
another as rapidly as if Shelley had 
been only four years old. Frank's 
father would have been troubled at 
the lack of business-like grasp of the 
subject. What was the skylark like ? 
It was 

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

Then again, it was 



It was 



Like a star of heaven 
In the broad daylight. 

Like a poet hidden 
In the light of thought. 



It was like a high-born maiden, like 

a rose, like a glow-worm, like vernal 

186 



2&emg 45toton^ap 

showers. The mind wanders off and 
sees visions of purple evenings and 
golden lightnings and white dawns 
and rain-awakened flowers. These 
were but hints of the reality of feel- 
ing, for 

All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth sur- 
pass. 

We know of religion — or at least 
we have often been told — that it is 
found in the purest form in the heart 
of a child, and that it consists in nur- 
ture and development of this early 
grace through all the years that may 
be allotted. The same thing is true 
of all that concerns the ideal life. 
The artist, the reformer, the inventor, 
the poet, the man of pure science, the 
really fruitful and original man of 
187 



€1)0 S^gnominp of 

affairs, — these are the incorrigibles. 
They refuse to accept the hard-and- 
fast rules that are laid down for them. 
They insist upon finding time and 
room for activities that are not con- 
ceived of as tasks, but as the glorious 
play of their own faculties. They are 
full of a great, joyous impulse, and 
their work is but the expression of 
this impulse. They somehow have 
time for the unexpected. They see 
that which 

Gives to seas and sunset skies 
The unspent beauty of surprise. 

The world is in their eyes ever fresh 
and sparkling. Life is full of possi- 
bilities. They see no reason to give 
up the habit of wonder. They never 
outgrow the need of asking questions, 
though the final answers do not come. 
188 



seeing <Btoiiyn^Bp 

When to a person of this temper you 
repeat the hard maxims of workaday 
wisdom, he escapes from you with 
the smiling audacity of a truant boy. 
He is one who has awakened right 
early on a wonderful morning. There 
is a spectacle to be seen by those who 
have eyes for it. He is not willing out 
of respect for you to miss it. He hears 
the music, and he follows it. It is the 
music of the 

Olympian bards who sung 

Divine ideas below. 
Which always find us young, 

And always keep us so. 



Ciiti^tma^ anti tl^e S>pitxt of 
SDemotratp 



nJa*.'^, 




CftriStma^ anti t^t spirit of 
Demotracp 



"Times have changed," said old 
Scrooge, as he sat by my fireside on 
Christmas Eve. "The Christmas 
Carol" had been read, as our custom 
was, and the children had gone to 
bed, so that only Scrooge and I re- 
mained to watch the dying embers. 

''Times have changed, and I am 
not appreciated as I was in the middle 
193 



of the last century. People don't seem 
to be having so good a time. You re- 
member the Christmas when I was 
converted ? What larks ! Up to that 
time I had been ' a squeezing, wrench- 
ing, grasping, scraping, clutching, 
covetous old sinner.' Those were the 
very words that described me. Then 
the Christmas Spirit took possession 
of me and — presto ! change ! All at 
once I became a new creature. I be- 
gan to hurry about, giving all sorts of 
things to all sorts of people. You re- 
member how I scattered turkeys over 
the neighborhood, shouting, 'Here's 
the turkey! Hello! Whoop! How 
are you! Merry Christmas!' And 
then I sat down and chuckled over 
my generosity till I cried. I was hav- 
ing the time of my life. You see, I 
194 



€fje spirit of SDemocracp 

had n't been used to that sort of thing, 
and it went to my head. 

"And how grateful everybody was ! 
They took everything in the spirit in 
which it was offered, and asked no 
questions. Everywhere there was an 
outstretched hand and a fervent God- 
bless-you for every gift. Nobody 
twitted me about the past. I was all 
at once elevated to the position of an 
earthly Providence. 

"Talk of fun ! Was there ever such 
a practical joke as to scare Bob 
Cratchit within an inch of his life and 
then raise his salary before he could 
say Jack Robinson ! You should have 
seen him jump! How the little 
Crat chits shouted for joy ! And when 
the thing was written up, all Anglo- 
Saxondom was smiling through its 
195 



tears and saying : 'That's just like us. 
God bless us, every one.' 

" But it 's different now. Something 
has got into the Christmas Spirit. 
Doing good does n't seem such a jolly 
thing as it once was, and you can't 
carry it off with a whoop and hello. 
People are getting critical. In these 
days a charitable shilling does n't go 
so far as it used to, and does n't buy 
nearly so many God-bless-you's. You 
complain of the rise in the price of 
the necessaries of life. It is n't a cir- 
cumstance to the increase in the cost 
of luxuries like benevolence. Almost 
every one looks forward to the time 
when he can afford to be generous. 
And when he is generous he likes to 
feel generous, and to have other people 
sympathize with him. It's only hu- 
196 



€i|e Jjpirit of SDemotrac^ 

man nature. A man can't be thinking 
about himself all the time; he gets 
that tired feeling that your scientific 
people in these days call altruism. 
It is an inability to concentrate his 
mind on his own concerns. In spite 
of himself his thoughts wander off to 
other people's affairs, and he has an 
impulse to do them good. Now in my 
day it was the easiest thing in the world 
to do good. The only thing necessary 
was to feel good-natured, and there 
you were ! Nowadays, the way of the 
benefactor is hard. It's so difficult 
that I understand you actually have 
Schools of Philanthropy." 

Scrooge shrugged his shoulders and 
seemed to shrivel at the thought of 
these horrible institutions. 

"Just fancy," he continued, ''how 
197 



I should have felt on that blessed 
Christmas night, if, instead of starting 
off as an amateur angel, feeling my 
wings growing every moment, I had 
been compelled to prepare for an 
entrance examination. I suppose I 
should have been put with the back- 
ward pupils whose early education 
had been neglected, and should have 
had to learn the A B C's of charity. 
School of Philanthropy! Ugh! And 
in the holidays, too ! 

"I have been visiting some elderly 
gentlemen who have had something 
of my experience with the Spirit of 
Christmas. Like me, they were con- 
verted somewhat late in life. They 
never were in as bad a way as I was, 
for I did business, you may remem- 
ber, in a narrow street with quite sor- 
198 



€l|e spirit of 2Democracp 

did surroundings, while they were 
financiers in a large way. Yet I sup- 
pose that they, too, were 'squeezing, 
wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutch- 
ing, covetous old sinners,' though 
nobody had the courage to tell them 
so. Then they got tired of clutching, 
and their hearts warmed and their 
hands relaxed and they began to give. 
Never was such giving known before. 
It was a perfect deluge of beneficence. 
A mere catalogue of the gifts would 
make a Christmas carol of itself. 

**But would you believe it, they 
never have got the fun out of it that I 
got when I filled the cab full of tur- 
keys and set out for Camden town. 
The old Christmas feeling seems to 
have been chilled. The public has 
grown critical. Instead of dancing for 
199 



joy, it looks suspiciously at the gifts 
and asks : ' Where did they get them ? ' 
It has been so impressed by the germ 
theory of disease that it foolishly fears 
that even money may be tainted. It's 
a preposterous situation. Generosity 
is a drug on the market, and grati- 
tude can't be had at any reasonable 
price." 

*' Yes," I said, "you are quite right, 
public sentiment has changed. Grati- 
tude is not so easily won as it was in 
your day, and it takes longer to trans- 
form a clutching, covetous old sinner 
into a serviceable philanthropist. But 
I do not think, Scrooge, that the 
Christmas Spirit has really vanished. 
He is only a little chastened and sub- 
dued by the Spirit of Democracy." 

*'I don't see what Democracy has 
200 



€fje spirit of SDemocracp 

to do with it," said Scrooge. "I'm 
sure that nobody ever accused me of 
being an aristocrat. What I am 
troubled about is the decay of grati- 
tude. If I give a poor fellow a shilling, 
I ought to be allowed the satisfaction 
of having him remove his hat and 
say, 'Thank'ee, sir,' and he ought to 
say it as if he meant it. The heartiness 
of his thanksgiving is half the fun. It 
makes one feel good all over." 

"But," I answered, "if the fellow 
happens to have a good memory he 
may recall the fact that yesterday you 
took two shillings from him, and he 
may think that the proper response 
to your sudden act of generosity is, 
* Where 's that other shilling ? ' That 's 
what the Spirit of Democracy puts 
him up to. It's not so polite, but you 
201 



must admit that it goes right to the 
point." 

"I don't like it," said Scrooge. 

"I thought you wouldn't. There 
are a great many people who don't 
like it. It's a twitting on facts that 
takes away a good deal of the pleasure 
of being generous." 

**I should say it did," grumbled 
Scrooge. /'It makes you feel mean 
just when you are most sensitive. 
Just think how I should have felt if, 
when I gave Bob Cratchit a dig in the 
waistcoat and told him that I had 
raised his salary, he had taken the 
opportunity to ask for back pay. It 
would have been most inopportune." 

*' You owed it to him, did n't you .^" 

"Yes, I suppose I did, if you choose 
to put it that way. But Bob would n't 
202 



€&e spirit of 2Demotracp 

have put it that way ; he would n't 
take such liberties. He took what I 
gave him ; and when I gave him more 
than he expected, he was all the hap- 
pier, and so was I. That 's what 
made it all seem so nice and Christ- 
masy. We were not thinking about 
rights and duties; it was all free 
grace." 

*'Now, Scrooge, you are getting at 
the point. There is no concealing the 
fact that the Spirit of Democracy 
makes himself unpleasant sometimes. 
He breaks up the old pleasant rela- 
tions existing not only between the 
Lords and the Commons, but between 
you andBobCratchit. Man is natur- 
ally a superstitious creature, and is 
prone to worship the first thing that 
comes in his way. When a poor fel- 
203 



low sees a person who is better off 
than himself, he jumps to the conclu- 
sion that he is a better man, and bows 
down before him, as before a won- 
der-working Providence. When this 
Providence smiles upon him, he is 
glad, and receives the bounty with de- 
vout thankfulness. It is what the old 
theologians used to call 'an uncove- 
nanted mercy.' 

*' All this is very pleasant to one who 
can sign himself by the grace of God 
king, or president of a coal company, 
or some such thing as that. The grati- 
fication extends to all the minor 
grades of greatness as well. The great 
man is ordained to give as it pleases 
him and the little men to receive with 
due meekness. The great man is 
always the man who has something. 
204 



€l|e spirit of SDemocracp 

I suppose^ Scrooge, that in your busy 
life, first scraping money together and 
then dispensing it in your joyous 
Christmasy way, you have not had 
much time for general reading or even 
for Hstening to sermons ? " 

"I have always attended Divine 
Service since my conversion," an- 
swered Scrooge, piously; "as for 
listening — " 

"What I was going to say was that 
if you had attended to such matters, 
you must have noticed how much of 
the literature of good-will is devoted 
to the praise of the Blessed Inequali- 
ties. How the changes are rung on 
the Strong and the Weak, the Wise 
and the Ignorant, the Rich and the 
Poor; especially the Poor, who form 
the hub of the philanthropic universe. 
205 



Nobody seems to meet another on 
the level. Everybody is either look- 
ing up or looking down, and they are 
taught how to do it. I remember 
attending the annual meeting of the 
Society for the Relief of Indigent 
Children. The indigent children 
were first fed and then insulted by a 
plethoric gentleman, who addressed 
to them a long discourse on indigence 
and the various duties that it entailed. 
And no one of the children was al- 
lowed to throw things at the speaker. 
They had all been taught to look 
grateful. 

"Now these inequalities do exist, 
and so long as they exist all sorts of 
helpful offices have place. The trouble 
is that good people are all the time 
doing their best to make the inequali- 
206 



€^t ^pitit of aDemotratp 

ties permanent. You have heard how 
divines have interpreted the text, 
*The poor ye have always with you.' 
The good old doctrine has been that 
the relation between those who have 
not and those who have should be 
that of one-sided dependence. The 
Ignorant must depend upon the Wise, 
the Weak upon the Strong, the Poor 
upon the Rich. As for the black, 
yellow, and various parti-colored 
races, they must depend upon the 
White Man, who gayly walks off with 
their burdens without so much as 
saying 'By your leave.' 

"Now it is against this whole the- 
ory, however beautifully or piously 
expressed, that the protest has come. 
The Spirit of Democracy is a bold 
iconoclast, and goes about smashing 
207 



our idols. He laughs at the preten- 
sions of the Strong and the Wise and 
the Rich to have created the things 
they possess. They are not the mas- 
ters of the feast. They are only those 
of us who have got at the head of the 
line, sometimes by unmannerly push- 
ing, and have secured a place at the 
first table. We are not here by their 
leave, and we may go directly to the 
source of supplies. They are not 
benefactors, but beneficiaries. The 
Spirit of Democracy insists that they 
shall know their place. He rebukes 
even the Captains of Industry, and 
when they answer insolently, he sug- 
gests that they be reduced to the ranks. 
Even toward bishops and other clergy 
his manner lacks that perfect rever- 
ence that belonged to an earlier time ; 
208 



€l)e M>9itit of 2Democracp 

yet he listens to them respectfully 
when they talk sense. 

*'It is this spirit that plays the 
mischief with many of the merry old 
ways of doing good. To scatter tur- 
keys or colleges among a multitude 
of gratefully dependent folks is the 
very poetry of philanthropy. But to 
satisfy the curiosity of an independent 
citizen as to your title to these things 
is a different matter. The more in- 
dependent people are, the harder it 
is to do good to them. They are apt 
to have their own ideas of what they 
want." 

"It's a pity, then, to have them so 
independent," said Scrooge ; "it spoils 
people to get above their proper 
station in life." 

"Ah! there you are," I answered; 
209 



"I feared it would come to that. With 
all your exuberant good-will you 
have n't altogether got beyond the 
theory that has come down from the 
time when the first cave-dweller be- 
stowed on his neighbor the bone he 
himself did n't need, and established 
the pleasant relation of benefactor and 
beneficiary. It gave him such a warm 
feeling in his heart that he naturally 
wanted to make the relation perma- 
nent. First Cave-dweller felt a little 
disappointed next day when Second 
Cave-dweller, instead of coming to 
him for another bone, preferred to 
take his pointed stick and go hunting 
on his own account. It seemed a little 
ungrateful in him, and First Cave- 
dweller felt that it would be no more 
than right to arrange legislation in the 
210 



€6e S>9itit of SDemocracp 

cave so that this should not happen 
again. 

*' Christian Charity is a very beau- 
tiful thing, but sometimes it gets 
mixed up with these ideas of the cave- 
dwellers. Sometimes it perpetuates 
the very evils that it laments. Per- 
haps you won't mind my reading a 
bit from a homily of St. Augustine on 
this very subject. St. Augustine was a 
man who was a good many centuries 
ahead of his time. He begins his 
argument by saying : ' All love, dear 
brethren, consists in wishing well to 
those who are loved.' This seems like 
a harmless proposition. It is the sort 
of thing you might hear in a sermon 
and think no more about. But St. 
Augustine goes to the root of the mat- 
ter, and asks what it means to wish 
211 



well to the person you are trying to 
help. He comes to the conclusion that 
if you really wish him well, you must 
wish him to be at least as well oflE and 
as well able to take care of himself 
as you are. The first thing you know, 
you are wishing to have him reach a 
point where he will not look up to you 
at all. 'There is a certain friendli- 
ness by which we desire at one time 
or another to do good to those we 
love. But how if there be no good 
that we can do.^ We ought not to 
wish men to be wretched that we may 
be enabled to practice works of mercy. 
Thou givest bread to the hungry, but 
better were it that none hungered and 
thou hadst none to give to. Thou 
clothest the naked ; oh, that all men 
were clothed and that this need 
212 



^^t spirit of SDrniocratp 

existed not ! Take away the wretched, 
and the works of mercy will be at an 
end, but shall the ardor of charity be 
quenched? With a truer touch of 
love thou lovest the happy man to 
whom there is no good office that 
thou canst do ; purer will that love be 
and more unalloyed. For if thou hast 
done a kindness to the wretched, per- 
haps thou wishest him to be subject 
to thee. He was in need, thou didst 
bestow; thou seemest to thyself 
greater because thou didst bestow 
than he upon whom it was bestowed. 
Wish him to be thine equal.' 

"There, Scrooge, is the text for the 
little Christmas sermon that I should 
like to preach to you and to your 
elderly wealthy friends who feel that 
they are not so warmly appreciated 
213 



as they once were. 'Wish him to be 
thine equal' — that is the test of 
charity. It is all right to give a poor 
devil a turkey. But are you anxious 
that he shall have as good a chance 
as you have to buy a turkey for him- 
self.? Are you really enthusiastic 
about so equalizing opportunities that 
by and by you shall be surrounded 
by happy, selfrreliant people who 
have no need of your benefactions ? 
"Do you know, Scrooge, I some- 
times think that it is time for some 
one to write a new ' Christmas Carol,' 
a carol that will make the world know 
how people are feeling and some of 
the best things they are doing in these 
days. It should be founded on Jus- 
tice and not on Mercy. We should 
feed up Bob Cratchit and put some 
214 



€|)e spirit of 2Democracp 

courage into him, and he should come 
to you and ask a living wage not as a 
favor, but as a right. And you, 
Scrooge, would not be offended at him, 
but you would sit down like a sen- 
sible man and figure it out with him. 
And when the talk was over, you 
would n't feel particularly generous, 
and he would n't feel particularly 
grateful ; it would be simple business. 
But you would like each other better, 
and the business would seem more 
worth while. 

"And then, when you went out with 
the Spirit of Christmas, you would ask 
the Spirit of Democracy to go with 
you and show you the new things that 
are most worth seeing. He would n't 
wait for the night, for the cheeriest 
things would be those that go on dur- 
215 



Cliri^tma^ anil 

ing business hours. He would show 
you some sights to make your heart 
glad. He would show you vast num- 
bers of persons who have got tired of 
the worship of the Blessed Inequali- 
ties, and who are going in for the 
Equalities. They have a suspicion 
that there is not so much difference 
between the Great and the Small 
as has been supposed, and that what 
difference there is does not prevent 
a frank comradeship and a perfect 
understanding. They think it is bet- 
ter to work with people than to work 
for them. They think that one of the 
inalienable rights of man is the right 
to make his own mistakes and to learn 
the lesson from them without too 
much prompting. So they are a little 
shy of many of the more intrusive 
216 



€^t spirit of SDemotracp 

forms of philanthropy. But you 
should see what they are up to. 

"The Spirit of Democracy will 
take you to visit a school that is not 
at all like the school you used to go 
to, Scrooge. The teacher has for- 
gotten his rod and his rules and his 
airs of superiority. He is not teach- 
ing at all, so far as you can see. He is 
the centre of a group of eager learners, 
who are using their own wits and not 
depending on his. They are so busy 
observing, comparing, reasoning, and 
finding out things for themselves that 
he can hardly get in a word edgewise. 
And he seems to like it, though it is 
clear that if they keep on at this rate 
they will soon get ahead of their 
teacher. 

"And the Spirit of Democracy will 
217 



take you to a children's court, where 
the judge does not seem like a judge 
at all, but like a big brother who shows 
the boys what they ought to do and 
sees that they do it. He will take you 
to a little republic, where boys and 
girls who have defied laws that they 
did not understand are making laws 
of their own and enforcing them in a 
way that makes the ordinary citizen 
feel ashamed of himself. They do it 
all so naturally that you wonder that 
nobody had thought of the plan before. 
He will take you to pleasant houses in 
unpleasant parts of the city, and there 
you will meet pleasant young people 
who are having a very good time with 
their neighbors and who are getting 
to be rather proud of their neighbor- 
hood. After you have had a cup of 
218 



€l)e M>9ttit of SDemotratp 

tea, they may talk over with you the 
neighborhood problems. If you have 
any sensible suggestion to make, these 
young people will listen to you ; but 
if you begin to talk condescendingly 
about the Poor, they will change the 
subject. They are not philanthropists 
— they are only neighbors. 

"I hope he may take you, Scrooge 
— this Spirit of Democracy — to some 
of the charity organizations I know 
about. I realize that you are pre- 
judiced against that sort of thing, it 
seems so cold and calculating, com- 
pared with your impulsive way of 
doing good. And you will probably 
quote the lines about 

Organized charity scrimped and iced 

In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ. 

''Never mind about the statistics; 
219 



they only mean that these people are 
doing business on a larger scale than 
did the good people who could carry 
all the details in their heads. What I 
want you to notice is the way in which 
the scientific interest does away with 
that patronizing pity that was the 
hardest thing to bear in the old-time 
charities. These modem experts go 
about mending broken fortunes in 
very much the same way in which 
surgeons mend broken bones. The 
patient does n't feel under any oppres- 
sive weight of obligation, he has given 
them such a good opportunity to show 
their skill. And the doctors have 
caught the spirit, too. Instead of 
looking wise and waiting for people 
to come to them in the last extremity, 
they have enlisted in Social Service. 
220 



€l^e Spirit of aDemotracp 

You should see them going about 
opening windows, and forcing people 
to poke their heads out into the night 
air, and making landlords miserable 
by their calculations about cubic feet, 
and investigating sweat-shops and 
analyzing foodstuffs. It 's their way of 
bringing in a Merry Christmas. 

''And the Spirit of Democracy will 
take you to workshops, where you may 
see the new kind of Captain of In- 
dustry in friendly consultation with 
the new kind of Labor Leader. For 
the new Captain is not a chief of 
banditti, interested only in the booty 
he can get for himself, and the new 
Leader is not a conspirator waiting 
for a chance to plunge his knife into 
the more successful bandit's back. 
These two are responsible members 
£21 



of a great industrial army, and they 
realize their responsibility. They have 
not met to exchange compliments. 
They are not sentimentalists, but 
shrewd men of affairs who have met 
to plan a campaign for the common 
welfare. They don't take any credit 
for it, for they do not expect to give 
to any man any more than his due; 
yet there are a good many Christmas 
dinners involved in the cool, business- 
like consultation. 

"Afterward, the Spirit of Demo- 
cracy will take you to a church where 
the minister is preaching from the 
text, *Ye are all kings and priests,' 
as if he believed it ; and you will be- 
lieve it too, and go on your way won- 
dering at the many sacred oflSces in 
the world. 

222 



€l)e M^pitit of SDemocracp 

** You will hurry on from the church 
to shake hands with the new kind of 
politician. He is not the dignified 
'statesman' you have read about and 
admired afar oiff , who has every quali- 
fication for high office except the abil- 
ity to get himself elected. This man 
knows the game of politics. He is not 
fastidious, and likes nothing better 
than to be in the thick of a scrimmage. 
He has not the scholar's scorn of 'the 
aggregate mind.' He thinks that it 
is a very good kind of mind if it is 
only rightly interpreted. He has the 
idea that what all of us want is bet- 
ter than what some few of us want, 
and that when all of us make up our 
minds to work together we can get what 
we want without asking anybody's 
leave. He thinks that what all of us 
223 



want is fair play, and so he goes 
straight for that without much re- 
gard for special interests. It is a 
simple programme, but it's wonder- 
ful what a difference it makes. 

" There never was a time, Scrooge, 
when the message of good-will was 
so widely interpreted in action, or 
when it took hold of so many kinds of 
men. Perhaps you would n't mind 
my reading another little bit from 
St. Augustine: 'Two are those to 
whom thou doest alms; two hunger, 
one for bread, the other for righteous- 
ness. Between these two famishing 
persons thou, the doer of the good 
work, art set. The one craves what 
he may eat, the other craves what he 
may imitate. Thou feedest the one, 
give thyself as a pattern to the other, 
224 



Cl^e spirit of SDemocracp 

so hast thou given to both. The one 
thou hast caused to thank thee for 
satisfying his hunger, the other thou 
hast made to imitate thee by setting 
him a worthy example.' 

"It is this hunger for simple justice 
that is the great thing. And there are 
people who are giving their whole 
lives to satisfy it. What we need is 
to realize what it all means, and to 
get that joyous thrill over it that came 
to you when you found for the first 
time that life consisted not in getting, 
but in giving. It's a wonderful giv- 
ing, this giving of one's self, and 
people do appreciate it. When you 
have ministered to a person's self- 
respect, when you have contributed 
to his self-reliance, when you have 
inspired him to self-help, you have 
225 



given him something. And you are 
conscious of it, and so is he, though 
you both find it hard to express in the 
old terms. All the old Christmas 
cheer is in these reciprocities of 
friendship that have lost every touch 
of condescension. We need some 
genial imagination to picture to us all 
the happiness that is being diffused 
by people who have come to look upon 
themselves not as God's almoners, 
but as sharers with others in the Com- 
mon Good. I wish we had a new 
Dickens to write it up." 

"If you are waiting for that, you 
will wait a long time," said Scrooge. 

"Perhaps so, but the people are 
here all the same, and they are getting 
on with their work." 



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